told you. I was to let you know of his arrest and of
the danger you would run."

Ledantec was deceived by the straightforward and unhesitating way in
which Hyde told his story.

"It may be so. At any rate, the warning must not be despised. Whether
or not you are to be trusted remains to be seen. But I will keep you
safe for a day or two longer and see what turns up. In any case you
cannot do much mischief to Cyprienne while shut fast here."

"Cyprienne?" said Hyde, quite innocently.

"I am quite aware of one reason that brought you to Paris, but, as I
have said, you cannot well execute your threats so long as we hold you
tight."

Hyde shook his head as though these remarks were completely
unintelligible. But he laughed within himself at the thought that he
had already outwitted both Cyprienne and her accomplice, and that,
wherever he was, a prisoner or at large, events would work out her
discomfiture without him.

He had no fears for himself. They had promised him at the British
Embassy that he should be sought out if he did not reappear within
three days. Besides, the French police had their eyes on the house.
The tables would presently be turned upon his captors in a way that
they little expected.

When, therefore, he was led by Ledantec's orders into a little back
room dimly lighted by a window looking on to a blank wall, he went
like a lamb. But physically he was not particularly comfortable; there
were pleasanter ways of spending the day than tied hand and foot to
the legs of a bedstead, and Ledantec's farewell speech was calculated
to disturb his equanimity.

"Don't make a sound or a move, mind. If you do--" and he produced a
glittering knife, with a look that could not be misunderstood.

CHAPTER X.

SUSPENSE.

McKay must have slept for many hours. Daylight was fading, and the den
he occupied was nearly dark, when he was aroused by the voices of his
Russian fellow-lodgers coming off duty for the night.

They were rough, simple fellows most of them: boorish peasants torn
from their village homes, and forced to fight in their Czar's quarrel,
which he was pleased to call a holy war. Coarse, uncultivated, but not
unkindly, and they gathered around McKay, staring curiously at him,
and plying him with questions.

His command of their language soon established amicable relations, and
presently, when supper was ready, a nauseous mess of _kasha_, or thick
oatmeal porridge, boiled with salt pork, t