lly do?"

"Oh, I do more than 'hope,' count, I have succeeded. I knew last night
where both pearl and letter were. To-morrow night--ah, well, let
to-morrow tell its own tale. Only be in the square at the hour I
mention, and when I lift a lighted candle and pass it across the salon
window, send the guard here with the passports. Let them remain outside,
within sight, but not within range of hearing what is said and done. You
alone are to enter, remember that."

"To receive the jewel and the letter?" eagerly. "Or, at least to have
you point out the hiding-place of them?"

"No; we should be shot down like dogs if I undertook a mad thing like
that."

"Then, monsieur, how are we to seize them? How get them into our
possession, his Majesty and I?"

"From my hand, count; this hand which held them both before I went to
bed last night."

"Monsieur!" The count fell back from him as if from some supernatural
presence. "You found them? You held them? You took possession of them
last night? How did you get them out of the house?"

"I have not done so yet."

"But can you? Oh, monsieur, wizard though you are, can you get them past
her guards? Can you, monsieur, can you?"

"Watch for the light at the window, count. It will not be waved unless
it is safe for you to come and the pearl is already out of the house."

"And the letter, monsieur, the damning letter?"

Cleek smiled one of his strange, inscrutable smiles.

"Ask me that to-morrow, count," he said. "You shall hear something, you
and madame, that will surprise you both," then twisted round on his heel
and walked hurriedly away. And all that day and all that night he danced
attendance upon madame, and sang to her, and handed her bedroom candle
to her as he had done the night before, and gave back jest for jest and
returned her merry badinage in kind.

Nor did he change in that when the fateful to-morrow came. From morning
till night he was at her side, at her beck and call; doing nothing that
was different from the doings of yesterday, save that at evening he
locked the mongrel dog up in his room instead of carrying him about. And
the dog, feeling its loneliness or, possibly, famishing, for he had
given it not a morsel of food since he found it, howled and howled until
the din became unbearable.

"Monsieur, I wish you would silence that beast or else feed it," said
madame pettishly. "The howling of the wretched thing gets on my nerves.
Give it some food for pity's