re than believe that," he declared. "I know it. It has fallen to
my lot to make a very definite discovery concerning them. Listen, my
friend. For more than six months the Government has been trying to
discover the source of this stream of vile socialistic literature which
has contaminated the French working classes. The pamphlets have been
distributed with devilish ingenuity amongst all national operatives, the
army and the navy. The Government has failed. The Double Four has
succeeded."

"You have really discovered their source?" Peter exclaimed.

"Without a doubt," Sogrange assented. "The Government appealed to us
first some months ago when I was in America. For a time we had no
success. Then a clue, and the rest was easy. The navy, the army, the
post-office employees, the telegraph and telephone operators, and the
railway men, have been the chief recipients of this incessant stream of
foul literature. To-day one cannot tell how much mischief has been
actually done. The strikes which have already occurred are only the
mutterings of the coming storm. But mark you, wherever those pamphlets
have gone, trouble has followed. What men may do the Government is
doing, but all the time the poison is at work, the seed has been sown.
Two millions of money have been spent to corrupt that very class which
should be the backbone of France. Through the fingers of one man has
come this shower of gold, one man alone has stood at the head of the
great organisation which has disseminated this loathsome disease. Behind
him--well, we know."

"The man?"

"It is fitting that you should ask that question," Sogrange replied.
"The name of that man is Bernadine, Count von Hern."

Peter remained speechless. There was something almost terrible in the
slow preciseness with which Sogrange had uttered the name of his enemy,
something unspeakably threatening in the cold glitter of his angry eyes.

"Up to the present," Sogrange continued, "I have
watched--sympathetically, of course, but with a certain amount of
amusement--the duel between you and Bernadine. It has been against your
country and your country's welfare that most of his efforts have been
directed, which perhaps accounts for the equanimity with which I have
been contented to remain a looker-on. It is apparent, my dear Baron,
that in most of your encounters the honours have remained with you. Yet,
as it has chanced, never once has Bernadine been struck a real and
crushing blow. The t