ld cost roughly $10,000--say 15,000
rubles.

I decided that neither England nor Japan would grudge the price.

"I think your suggestion is a good one," I answered M. Auguste. "In
that case, should you be willing to share the bet?"

"I should be willing to undertake it entirely," was the response.

The scoundrel wanted $20,000!

Had I been dealing with an honest man I should have let him have the
money. But he had raised his terms so artfully that I felt sure that
if I yielded this he would at once make some fresh demand.

I therefore shook my head, and began picking up the notes on the
table.

"That would not suit me at all," I said decidedly. "I do not wish to
be left out altogether."

M. Auguste watched me with growing uneasiness as I restored the notes
one by one to my pocket-book.

"Look here!" he said abruptly, as the last note disappeared. "Tell me
plainly what you expect me to do."

"I expect you to have a communication from your friend Madame
Blavatsky, or any other spirit you may prefer--Peter the Great would
be most effective, I should think--every time the Baltic Fleet is
ready to start, warning 'Mr. Nicholas' not to let it sail."

M. Auguste appeared to turn this proposal over in his mind.

"And is that all?" he asked.

"I shall expect you to keep perfect secrecy about the arrangement. I
have a friend at Potsdam, and I shall be pretty sure to hear if you
try to give me away."

"Potsdam!" M. Auguste seemed genuinely surprised, and even
disconcerted.

"Do you mean to say that you didn't know you were carrying out the
instructions of Wilhelm II.?" I demanded, scarcely less surprised.

It was difficult to believe that the vexation showed by the medium
was feigned.

"Of course! I see it now!" burst from him. "I wondered what she meant
by all that stuff about Germany. And I--a Frenchman!"

It is extraordinary what unexpected scruples will display themselves
in the most unprincipled knaves. Low as they may descend, there seems
always to be some one point on which they are as sensitive as a
Bayard.

M. Auguste, of all men in the world, was a French patriot! It turned
out that he was a fanatical Nationalist and anti-Semite. He had
howled in anti-Dreyfusite mobs, and flung stones at the windows of
Masonic temples in Paris.

I was delighted with this discovery, which gave me a stronger hold on
him than any bribe could.

But I had noted the feminine pronoun in his exclamation recorded
above