one, and the great
inspection-room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to
overflowing. The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be
Germans. There were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the
others, had the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together--just as
the women drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who
hoped against hope that their passports were in order. For the most
part, no one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested
with so much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an
intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and
feel at their ease.

Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's,
was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of
anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin,
whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left
it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be
observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge.
He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned,
black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no
attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and he avoided the
refreshment-room tea.

Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him.
Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of
the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or, perhaps, the
younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.

He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
high-born Briton.

"Englishman?" he said, with an easy and friendly nod.

"Yes," answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
oddly stiff.

"Thought you were," said the other, who, though his clothes were English
and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
There was a sort of eagerness in his