pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow--next day--a week
hence--I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot
by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death."

"Monsieur, I cannot follow you--you speak in riddles."

"I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I'm
afraid."

"I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal,
monsieur. What is it that has happened to your countenance? You have
done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and
entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred. What is it? How has
it come about? The night before last, when I saw you for the first
time, your face was one that impressed me with a sense of
familiarity--now, monsieur, you are like a different man."

"I am a different man, Count. Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray;
yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid
scheme."

The Count made no reply. He could not comprehend the man at all, and at
times--but for the world-wide reputation of him--he would have believed
him insane. Not a question as to the great and important case he was on,
but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently
aimless whims! Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel
puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch
resting in his hands!

For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt
under the broad _porte cochere_ of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after
that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski,
her purblind associate, and her retinue of servant-guards.

A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the
tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia;
bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and
calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all
the women of the Count's family should be banished from the house during
her stay; that the great salon of the villa--a wondrous apartment, hung
in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier--should be put
at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be
replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms
of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker
cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how
he listed,