d seen Cleek last. It was still in
darkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas
again, and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.

And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew
that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding
Cleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward,
a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deep
stupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper
forever gone!

* * * * *

It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in
the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a
dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb
through the stillness; and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirl up
out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a
flash. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he
waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered
window, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to hear
a voice from within the vehicle speak.

"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infallible
recipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes and
then skate over. Good night!"

"One for his nob that, Gov'nor--my hat, yuss!" said Dollops, with a
shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa
butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite the
fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far
past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his
five fingers and his snub nose. "Oh, Mother 'Ubbard! Did you see him,
sir? Bunked back in his 'ole like somebody had 'give him the hook,' and
cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't think
them Germans 'ull be sittin' on the steps of St. Paul's this year,
sir--not them!"

Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on
with the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thing
himself.

"I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been
floating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to
sink a barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you," he said, as he
pushed the outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to
get into ordinary civili