red at
him wonderingly.

"What in the devil are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the Roosian princess," chuckled Dart. "I told Wanda
all about her, what a nifty dame she is, you know, and how you saved
her life and how she put her arms around your neck and cried and--"

"Good Lord," groaned Shandon. "I could wring your neck, Dart. What in
the world made you lie to her like that?"

"This here is a prime cigar, Red. Better send for a fresh box, this
one is drying up. Now, I'm going to tell you something: My mother was
a fortune teller and maybe that's why it is, but anyway I can dope up
what people are thinking lots of times. I hadn't any more than said
Red Shandon to her than I got wise to that little girl's trouble. Say,
Red, she's just naturally stuck on you! It's a fact! Now, when a
woman's stuck on a guy, what's the way to make her go clean nuts over
him? What's the answer? Why, just tell her about the other woman like
I told Wanda about Princess Helga."

"Helga?" cried Shandon in sheer wonder. "What Helga?"

"The Roosian princess," beamed Willie Dart.

"Dart," very sternly. "You lie to me now and I'll wire the police of
New York that you are here. I ought to do it anyway; I would have done
it when you came if I hadn't been a fool and you hadn't filled me up
with your lies until I was sorry for you. Why did you say Helga?
Where did you learn that name? What Helga do you know?"

Dart hesitated briefly, his childlike eyes smiling frankly, the shrewd
side of his strange brain very busy.

"When you took me up to your room that day in New York and threw some
grub into me," he replied at last with apparent carelessness, "and left
me for a minute, why I just sort of looked things over. There was a
letter with Helga signed to it. The name's awful funny, ain't it? She
is Roosian, ain't she?"

"What do you know about her?"

"Just that she was much obliged to you for the information you promised
to send her about something or other. It ain't anything to send you up
the river for, Red."

"What did you tell Miss Leland?"

"Miss Leland? Oh, Wanda, you mean." Mr. Dart repeated the tale he had
told Wanda with the many fanciful embellishments which it seemed
necessary for him to give to any story that he found it necessary to
repeat.

"I sure enough boosted your game, Red. Say, kid, it worked for fair.
You ought to have--"

Even after the threats which Wayne Shandon made to him that n