He said nothing but "Yes." The Rat threw
himself forward on the table, face downward.

"Then," he said, "he must make me believe it. He must teach me--if he
can."

They heard a clumping step upon the staircase, and, when it reached the
landing, it stopped at their door. Then there was a solid knock.

When Marco opened the door, the young soldier who had escorted him from
the Hof-Theater was standing outside. He looked as uninterested and
stolid as before, as he handed in a small flat package.

"You must have dropped it near your seat at the Opera," he said. "I
was to give it into your own hands. It is your purse."

After he had clumped down the staircase again, Marco and The Rat drew a
quick breath at one and the same time.

"I had no seat and I had no purse," Marco said. "Let us open it."

There was a flat limp leather note-holder inside. In it was a paper,
at the head of which were photographs of the Lovely Person and her
companion. Beneath were a few lines which stated that they were the
well known spies, Eugenia Karovna and Paul Varel, and that the bearer
must be protected against them. It was signed by the Chief of the
Police. On a separate sheet was written the command: "Carry this with
you as protection."

"That is help," The Rat said. "It would protect us, even in another
country. The Chancellor sent it--but you made the strong call--and
it's here!"

There was no street lamp to shine into their windows when they went at
last to bed. When the blind was drawn up, they were nearer the sky
than they had been in the Marylebone Road. The last thing each of them
saw, as he went to sleep, was the stars--and in their dreams, they saw
them grow larger and larger, and hang like lamps of radiance against
the violet--velvet sky above a ledge of a Himalayan Mountain, where
they listened to the sound of a low voice going on and on and on.

XXII

A NIGHT VIGIL

On a hill in the midst of a great Austrian plain, around which high
Alps wait watching through the ages stands a venerable fortress, almost
more beautiful than anything one has ever seen. Perhaps, if it were not
for the great plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread
beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered
about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it
might--though it is to be doubted--seem something less a marvel of
medieval picturesqueness. But out of the plain rises the lo