ou understand well that duty
must be done, at whatever personal cost and inconvenience. Permit me to
restore the rest of your property, Monsieur; this only I must retain."
He thrust the handkerchief into his desk. "Perhaps--who knows--we may
discover the fair owner, and restore it to her."

His civility was even more loathsome to me than his insolence had been,
and I wanted to kick him. But I didn't. I offered him a cigarette,
instead, and we parted with mutual bows and smiles.

Once on the street again I walked away in the opposite direction to that
I should have taken if I had been sure I would not be followed and
watched; but I guessed that, for the present at least, I would be kept
under strict surveillance, and doubtless at this moment my footsteps
were being dogged.

Therefore I made first for the cafe where I usually lunched, and, a
minute after I had seated myself, a man in uniform strolled in and
placed himself at a table just opposite, with his back to me, but his
face towards a mirror, in which, as I soon discovered, he was watching
my every movement.

"All right, my friend. Forewarned is forearmed; I'll give you the slip
directly," I thought, and went on with my meal, affecting to be absorbed
in a German newspaper, which I asked the waiter to bring me.

In the ordinary course I should have met people I knew, for the cafe
was frequented by most of the foreign journalists in Petersburg, but
the hour was early for _dejeuner_, and the spy and I had the place to
ourselves for the present.

I knew that I should communicate the fact that Anne was in Petersburg to
the Grand Duke Loris as soon as possible; in the hope that he might know
or guess who were her captors, and where they were taking her; but it
was imperative that I should exercise the utmost caution.

After we reached Petersburg, and before he left me, Mishka had, as his
master had promised, given me instructions as to how I was to send a
private message to the Duke in case of necessity. He took me to a house
in a mean street near the Ismailskaia Prospekt--not half a mile from the
place where I was arrested this morning--of which the ground floor was a
poor class cafe frequented chiefly by workmen and students.

"You will go to the place I shall show you," he had informed me
beforehand, "and call for a glass of tea, just like any one else. Then
as you pay for it, you drop a coin,--so. You will pick it up, or the
waiter will,--it is all one, that;