ing,' Mr. Cleek: the horrible thing that
has been making life an agony to him ever since. On the night when that
abominable 'Red Crawl' first overcame him there was upon his person a
most important document. It was a rough draft of the maps of
fortification and the plan of the secret defences of France, the
identical document from which was afterward transcribed the parchment
now deposited in the secret archives of the Republic. When Baron de
Carjorac recovered his senses after his horrifying experience----"

"That document was gone?"

"Part of it, Mr. Cleek, thank God, only a part! If it had been the
parchment itself, no such merciful thing could possibly have happened.
But the paper was old, much folding and handling had worn the creases
through, and when, in his haste, the secret robber grabbed it, whilst
that loathsome creature held the old man down, it parted directly down
the middle, and he got only a vertical section of each of its many
pages."

"Victoria! 'And the fool hath said in his heart There is no God,'"
quoted Cleek. "So, then, the hirelings of the enemy have only got half
what they are after; and, as no single sentence can be complete upon a
paper torn like that, nothing can be made of it until the other half is
secured, and our German friends are still 'up a gum-tree.' I know now
why the baron stayed on at the Chateau Larouge and why 'The Red Crawl'
is preparing to pay him another visit to-night: He hoped, poor chap, to
find a clue to the whereabouts of the fragment he had lost; and that
thing is after the fragment he still retains. Well, it will be a long,
long day before either of those two fragments falls into German hands."

"Oh, Mr. Cleek, you think you can get the stolen paper back? You believe
you can outwit those dreadful people and save the Baron de Carjorac's
honour and his life?"

"Miss Lorne"--he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips--"Miss
Lorne, I thank you for giving me the chance! If you will do what I ask
you, be where I ask you in two hours' time, so surely as we two stand
here this minute, I will put back the German calendar by ten years at
least. They drink 'To the day,' those German Johnnies, but by to-morrow
morning the English hand you are holding will have given them reason to
groan over the night!"

II

It was half-past eleven o'clock. Madame la Comtesse, answering a reputed
call to the bedside of a dying friend, had departed early, and was not
to be expected