I have attended to
some affairs for her. Will you come with me to my apartment where we
may be alone?"

The men, who somehow made St. George think of tan-coloured
greyhounds with very gentle eyes, consulted each other, not with the
suspicion of the vulgar but with the caution of the thorough-bred.

"Pardon," said one, "if we may be quite assured that this is Miss
Holland's friend to whom we speak--"

St. George hesitated. The hall-boy listened with an air of polite
concern, and there were curious over-shoulder glances from the
passers-by. Suddenly St. George's face lighted and he went swiftly
through his pockets and produced a scrap of paper--the fragment that
had lain that morning on the floor of the prince's deserted
apartment, and that bore the arms of the King of Yaque. It was the
strangers' turn to regard him with amazement. Immediately, to St.
George's utmost embarrassment, they both bowed very low and
pronounced together:

"Pardon, adon!"

"My name is St. George," he assured them, "and let's get into a
cab."

They followed him without demur.

St. George leaned back on the cushions and looked at them--lean
lithe little men with rapid eyes and supple bodies and great
repose. They gave him the same sense of strangeness that he had
felt in the presence of the prince and of the woman in the Bitley
Reformatory--as if, it whimsically flashed to him, they some way
rhymed with a word which he did not know.

"What is it," St. George asked as they rolled away, "what is it that
you have come to tell Miss Holland?"

Only one of the men spoke, the other appearing content to show two
rows of exceptionally white teeth.

"May we not know, adon," asked the man respectfully, "whether the
prince has given her his news? And if the prince is still in your
land?"

"The prince's servant, Elissa, has tried to stab Miss Holland and
has got herself locked up," St. George imparted without hesitation.

An exclamation of horror broke from both men.

"To stab--to _kill_!" they cried.

"Quite so," said St. George, "and the prince, upon being discovered,
disclosed some very important news to Miss Holland, and she and her
friends started an hour ago for Yaque."

"That is well, that is well!" cried the little man, nodding, and
momentarily hesitated; "but yet his news--what news, adon, has he
told her?"

For a moment St. George regarded them both in silence.

"Ah, well now, what news had he?" he asked briefly.

The men a