ription of his
'interview,' at the Royal Victoria, with Alaric Hobbs, is a crystallized
work of humorous art!"

"Of course the Yankee savant will write columns to the Waukesha Clarion,
describing this Asiatic lion, Prince Djiddin, and exploit him in the
States as an 'original discovery' of his own. His eagerness to arrange
an interview between the Prince and Professor Fraser is most ludicrously
fortunate for us," said Captain Anstruther.

The entrance of the butler with a telegram disturbed "Prince Djiddin"
and his lovely confidential staff officer. "An answer, please, Captain,"
formally continued the household factotum.

"Hurrah!" cried Hardwicke, when the little conclave gathered around the
red light. "Simpson has arrived, and now Nadine and I have some one whom
we can both trust!" The further information that the "Moonshee" would
arrive forthwith to conduct "Prince Djiddin" to the safe haven where
that fascinating bride, Mrs. Flossie Murray, awaited her beloved
truant, was a call to prompt action. "I am ready! I shall drop the Royal
Engineers and live up to my 'blue china' as a Prince!" cried Hardwicke.

CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNCIL AT GRANVILLE.

When Major Alan Hawke returned, three weeks later, to the Hotel Grand
National, at Geneva, he was sorely wearied and dispirited. A round of
inspection of all the principal jewel marts of the continent had been
only a fruitless, solitary tourist promenade. And the ominous silence of
Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., boded no good to the military
future of the adventurer. "Damn me, if I don't think that I have been
hoodwinked!" growled Major Hawke, on his re-turn from Moscow and St.
Petersburg, whither he had been ordered, as a last resort, to see the
Court jewelers.

From Warsaw, he wrote to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, to send all
his letters to meet him at Berlin, where Jack Blunt had given him the
address of the safest "fence" in all Kaiser Wilhelm's broad domain. He
had his own jewels valued there in Russia, but dared not sell them.

With a sudden inspiration, born of a growing fear for the stability of
his house of cards, so flimsy in construction, he ran down to Jitomir,
and the half-crazed adventurer only lingered an hour with the Intendant
of Madame Alixe Delavigne's grand old domain. He found the bird flown.
Had he been duped? A permission to view the old chateau was courteously
accorded, and then Alan Hawke soon realized that he was betrayed. For