whether his callousness was real or feigned. I hope it was
feigned, though he affected to regard all who served him, in whatever
capacity, as mere pieces in the ambitious game he played, to be used or
discarded with equal skill and ruthlessness, and if an unlucky pawn fell
from the board,--why it was lost to the game, and there was an end of
it.

Murdered! It seemed incredible. I thought of Carson as I last saw him,
the day before I started for South Africa, when we dined together and
made a night of it. If I had been available when the situation became
acute in Russia a few weeks later, Southbourne would have sent me
instead of him; I should perhaps have met with his fate. I knew, of
course, that at this time a "special" in Russia ran quite as many risks
as a war correspondent on active service; but it was one thing to
encounter a stray bullet or a bayonet thrust in the course of one's
day's work,--say during an _emeute_,--and quite another to be murdered
in cold blood.

"That's terrible!" I said huskily, at last. "He was such a splendid
chap, too, poor Carson. Have you any details?"

"Yes; he was found in his rooms, stabbed to the heart. He must have been
dead twenty-four hours or more."

"And the police have tracked the murderer?"

"No, and I don't suppose they will. They've so many similar affairs of
their own on hand, that an Englishman more or less doesn't count. The
Embassy is moving in the matter, but it is very unlikely that anything
will be discovered beyond what is known already,--that it was the work
of an emissary of some secret society with which Carson had mixed
himself up, in defiance of my instructions."

He paused and lighted another cigarette.

"How do you know he defied your instructions?" I burst out indignantly.
The tone of his allusion to Carson riled me. "Don't you always expect us
to send a good story, no matter how, or at what personal risk, we get
the material?"

"Just so," he asserted calmly. "By the way, if you're in a funk, Wynn,
you needn't go. I can get another man to take your place to-night."

"I'm not in a funk, and I mean to go, unless you want to send another
man. If you do, send him and be damned to you both!" I retorted hotly.
"Look here, Lord Southbourne; Carson never failed in his duty,--I'd
stake my life on that! And I'll not allow you, or any man, to sneer at
him when he's dead and can't defend himself!"

Southbourne dropped his cigarette and stared at me, a dusky