and the motive of this
terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress--his own private
Bastille--the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb."

"I have seen him, and I have defied him," I said.

"You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
trifles," said Jack warningly.

"I don't fear," I replied. "Elma's enemies are also mine."

"Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
are actually in love with her?"

"I intend to rescue, and to marry her," I answered quite frankly.

"But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
facts concerning her," he said. "At present I only know one or two very
vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
when a child."

"But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?"

"Ah!" he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. "That's just the
question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
servitude."

"But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
steal them and sell them to a foreign government?"

"No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
risky one, and Dick Archer is