the very
threshold of her American home.

CHAPTER IV

JOHN ARMITAGE A PRISONER

All things are bright in the track of the sun,
All things are fair I see;
And the light in a golden tide has run
Down out of the sky to me.

And the world turns round and round and round,
And my thought sinks into the sea;
The sea of peace and of joy profound
Whose tide is mystery.

--S.W. Duffield.

The man whom John Armitage expected arrived at the Hotel Monte Rosa a few
hours after the Claibornes' departure.

While he waited, Mr. Armitage employed his time to advantage. He
carefully scrutinized his wardrobe, and after a process of elimination
and substitution he packed his raiment in two trunks and was ready to
leave the inn at ten minutes' notice. Between trains, when not engaged in
watching the incoming travelers, he smoked a pipe over various packets of
papers and letters, and these he burned with considerable care. All the
French and German newspaper accounts of the murder of Count von Stroebel
he read carefully; and even more particularly he studied the condition of
affairs in Vienna consequent upon the great statesman's death. Secret
agents from Vienna and detectives from Paris had visited Geneva in their
study of this astounding crime, and had made much fuss and asked many
questions; but Mr. John Armitage paid no heed to them. He had held the
last conversation of length that any one had enjoyed with Count Ferdinand
von Stroebel, but the fact of this interview was known to no one, unless
to one or two hotel servants, and these held a very high opinion of Mr.
Armitage's character, based on his generosity in the matter of gold coin;
and there could, of course, be no possible relationship between so
shocking a tragedy and a chance acquaintance between two travelers. Mr.
Armitage knew nothing that he cared to impart to detectives, and a great
deal that he had no intention of imparting to any one. He accumulated a
remarkable assortment of time-tables and advertisements of transatlantic
sailings against sudden need, and even engaged passage on three steamers
sailing from English and French ports within the week.

He expected that the person for whom he waited would go direct to the
Hotel Monte Rosa for the reason that Shirley Claiborne had been there;
and Armitage was not mistaken. When this person learned that the
Claibornes had left, he would doubtless hurry after them. This is the
conclusion that was reach