he see the bell-boy who was to deliver it? That business despatched, the clerk was free to attend to Mr. Napier. Yes, he had been told a gentleman of that name would call for Miss Ellis at 7:30. A bell-boy was waiting to take Mr. Napier up. Side by side in the elevator they shot through story after story, to be set down near the roof. With his thumb pressing the envelop to a little brass tray, the bell-boy held in its place, address face-downward, the much-sealed packet which had been the object of so much solicitude. At the end of an interminable corridor the soft-footed bell-boy tapped at a door. Without waiting, he opened it and went in, returning almost at once with the tray empty and the words, "This way, sir." The instant Napier was over the threshold, the door was shut behind him. He stood facing Miss von Schwarzenberg. She had risen in the act of laying the sealed packet on the table. In the midst of his surprise Napier mentally registered the fact that he had never seen her in more brilliant good looks. She was wearing over her dinner dress a superb fur coat, thrown back to show her jeweled neck.

"I am too early," Napier said. "I will wait down-stairs."

“You are not too early. It is Nan who is late. She won't be a minute." Miss Greta pointed to a chair as Napier stood that instant rigid by the door. "Don't," she cried softly-"don't be so hard upon me! Can't you see that I'm not standing in your way any more?"

"If that is so, you have your own reason for it." He turned and laid his hand on the door-handle. These American fastenings! He turned the knob fruitlessly.

"Don't be so hard!" She had come toward him; her voice burred softly over his shoulder. "When I'm trying to keep the straight road, don't force me down into the dark ways I abhor. Oh, listen, Gavan! Give me a chance to explain!"

"What's the matter with this door?" he demanded.

"How do I know?" She pressed her lace handkerchief to her lips.

He rattled the handle.

"For God's sake! don't make a

scene!" she cried in a harsh whisper. "Are you so bent on humiliating me both in private and in public as you did this morning? Another woman would n't forgive you this morning. And now, again, you want to humiliate me. Before hotel servants!"

"You told that bell-boy to fasten the door."

"Hush! For Nan's sake, anyway, don't make a scandal here!"

Napier turned and looked at her. "Whatever your motive is for this, you are wasting time."

"Not if you give me five minutes to explain. For you, too," she said with meaning, "it won't be wasting time."

His answer was to lift his hand and press the electric bell.

"Ah," she stepped back,-"you are implacable! You-you don't care how much you injure yourself if only you can injure me. Yes, you!" She broke off and turned away. For several moments she tood in that attitude, giving him ample time to relent, her meek head bent, the dazzling whiteness of her neck set off by the dark fur collar falling away from her shoulders. The silence was broken at last by a stifled sob as she carried her handkerchief to her lips and began to walk up and down. "I can't disguise it from myself any longer. You"-she stopped in the middle of the room-"you are the great disaster of my life." She waited. She gave him time to disavow the rôle. "Very well"-she folded her arms under the heavy fur-"very well," she repeated with a quiet intensity, "I shall not go out of your life, either, without leaving my mark. She shall make it up to me! Yes, and she shall make it up to Julian Grant for what he has given and lost. Be sure I shall see to that!" She came forward with an air of great dignity, slipped some catch, and opened the door. "Go!" she said in a penetrating voice.

Out of the elevator that shot up in response to Napier's ring stepped the same bell-boy. A last look back showed him running down the corridor, one of the long list of Greta's slaves.

The elevator stopped at the second floor. Nan stood waiting.

"Why," she exclaimed with bound

less surprise, "where have you come from?"

"There has been some mistake," Napier said. "I was taken to the wrong floor."

"I should think so! I was going down to see if my message had been forgotten. Wait! Oh, come while I get my gloves."

She disappeared through a sittingroom into a room beyond. Clearly Greta had taken some trouble to achieve her brief tête-à-tête.

As Nan came back, drawing on a long white glove, Napier was aware of some one coming down the stairs at a flying pace, some one for whom express elevators ran too slowly. A moment after the terrified face of the bell-boy appeared at the open door. "Come! Come quick! She's dying!"

had torn and still was tearing the woman. More than by any other sign, the fact that her heavy hair had become loosened unbecomingly, grotesquely, brought Napier the conviction that for once Greta von Schwarzenberg was n't acting. The great yellow mass of braids and curls had lurched over one ear, giving a look more of drunkenness than grief to the convulsed face. That one glimpse was enough. Napier turned away and paced the corridor for those leaden-footed minutes till Nan ran out, looking blindly up and down.

"Where are you? Oh, the most cruel, awful thing has happened! She has just had this letter. Greta's loverErnst Pforzheim is dead." The girl's eyes were full of tears. "Think of poor Greta running away up here to hide herself so as not to interfere with my

he

"Have you heard-any details?" Napier detained her to ask.

"Only that he died for the fatherland."

FOR all Taylor's professed anxiety to have Napier's report of his interview with the President, he was late. He was very late. Macray had looked in

"It is probably some device to prevent your going out with me," he said as the elevator stopped.

Again the boy sped down that interminable upper corridor, the two hurrying at his heels.

"I'll wait for you," Napier said. They had come to the door which the boy had not dared to open till he was supported by the presence of others. He knocked now, opened, and stood back.

Greta, in the arm-chair, the fur coat at her feet, had flung bare arms out across the table and half sat, half lay there, moaning, with hidden face.

Nan rushed in and took the woman in her arms. Napier, full of disgust for what he looked on as a piece of cheap theatricalism, was startled as the face fell back against Nan's shoulder. That it should be so blotched, so disfigured in that short time, bore witness to the violence of whatever the feeling was that

ening as the black-rimmed glasses verified the solitary figure in the room.

Finally he came in and closed the door. He crossed the long room and stood at Napier's side before he said with that brisk familiarity that cost Napier something not to resent:

"Remember that shady Bureau de Change, Mr. Taylor told you about?" As Napier did not instantly respond, Macray went on in his bloomy telegraphese, graphese, "Suspicious "Suspicious boom since Schwarz's reappearance."

Oh, yes, Napier remembered that.

"Hahn-fellow we 've had investigating-waiting for Taylor two mortal hours. Off to Chicago to-night-Hahn. 'Fore he goes, detail in bureau business got to be established. Hahn wants to go openly-one of the public-see 'f he c'n do business."

"Well, what's the objection?"

"No objection. Only Taylor 's kept him waitin' such an infernal time, Hahn won't be able lay hands on anybody

right sort before bureau shuts. Wants a witness. Fellow seems think I c'n hang fishin'-line out the window and hook what he calls 'suitable witness.' S'pose you would n't."

Napier was growing accustomed to exigencies and odd manners. He had the man in. Once or twice before he 'd seen here the clean-shaven young German-American, with his look of the typical waiter, which he was n't, overfed, under-exercised, a little scornful, with a leaden eye fixed on the main chance. One thought instinctively of tips as one's own eye, leaden or otherwise, took in his "waiting" air. He regarded his prospective companion without enthusiasm.

"You can't wear a stove-pipe hat," he said, "and you'd have to borrow a different overcoat."

Napier's instinctive reluctance was overborne by Macray's misinterpreting its origin.

"Schwarz won't be there. No fear. All same, no sense exciting remark."

Napier in his turn made no secret of the ground of his special interest in the enterprise.

"Why do you think she's behind this concern?"

Macray's curt: "Don't think. Know," decided Napier.

Two flights up, in a derelict office building on lower Broadway, they found a back room with a number on the door. It bore no business sign, no name.

The arrangement that Hahn should do the talking was initiated in the German tongue as they climbed the dingy stairs. Napier's secret uneasiness took alarm at the sound of steps behind. He looked back. On the first landing, under the flaring gas, which of itself was a sign of the outworn character of the place, a shabby old man in a fur cap was coming up behind them. Coming stealthily, Napier felt. But Hahn talked on stolidly about a hypothetical family in Karlsruhe. He knocked at the door, and then went in.

A bald head, with outstanding ears, bent over a table, reading. The gas jet, directly above, was set in a green tin reflector, and all the light in the room seemed to concentrate itself on that

corpse-white cranium; or, rather, the effect was as though the masked light, instead of being thrown on the man's head, had its origin there. A polished and luminous orb, it seemed to contain the shining like one of those porcelain globes over the old-time lamps.

"Is dis de blace vhere I can send money to Sharmany?" Hahn inquired. "Yep," said the clerk. "Shut the door, will you?"

Hahn had not budged.

"Bott safe, hein?" he said.

"Absolute." The man got up and shut the door. It was a drafty old place, he said. "Safe?" he said, resuming his place and gathering the light to himself again. This was not only a safe way; it was the only safe way.

Hahn produced a worn pocket-book. He wanted to send fifteen dollars to Karlsruhe.

Fifteen dollars? It was a long way to send only fifteen dollars. The worst of it was, the commission was heavier in proportion for a small sum like that. It cost the company as much to send fifteen dollars as it would cost to send five hundred.

"Vot gompany?" "This one. Who sent you here?" "Fleischmann, Sevent' Avenue." "Well, did n't he tell you about the company?"

"All Fleischmann tell me is de address." What he wanted, Hahn went on, was to send fifteen dollars every fortnight.

"To this " The polished head bent over the address.

Hahn opened his pocket-book and fingered some bills. But how was he to know the money had reached Karlsruhe?

"Simple enough; we guarantee it. I give you a receipt." The man opened a book of printed forms, dipped a pen into a dirty inkstand, and wrote the date.

How long, the visitor insisted, before he would hear from his family that the money had come?

"Depends on how soon they write." The tone was distinctly superior. "Family habits in these matters are different, we find."

His family acknowledged their letters

instantly, Hahn said, if they got them. They had n't been getting them. "You have been here before?" "No."

"I thought not. Then why did you expect your letters to get through, above all if they had money in them?" The unshadowed eyes in the pudding visage rested on the three five-dollar bills Hahn still held in his hand.

Hahn wished to know how soon he might hear if his family acknowledged at once.

"As a rule inside six weeks."

What would be the longest time, Hahn then wished to know.

"Two months-"

"It is a lie!" came from a crack in the noiselessly opened door. At a child's height from the floor a fur cap was thrust in. The gray beard sticking out beyond the mangy headgear gave the old face a fierceness instantly contradicted by the eyes.

"I haf a letter," he said, trembling with excitement. "De money I send two mont' before Christmas it nefer come. De money my friend send t'ree veek before dat it nefer come. You gif me my money back!" He came in, swinging his greasy coat-tails about his shambling legs. "Here is de baper to show you get my money."

The altercation went on in German, with excuses, threats. "Get out, or the police"

"Oh, you vill not like the bolice here." There was righteous anger on the part of the man at the desk; but a certain caution, too. Nobody could say at a time like this that in one case out of thousands something wholly unforeseen might not happen to delay

"It is not delayed!" the little man screamed. "It did not come! It vill not come! Vhere is it? Gif it back!"

"Ah-h, I remember you now!" the unlashed eyelids narrowed. "In your case, and to an address like that—”

"Vot de matter vid de address?" screamed the old man. "Berfectly goot address!"

"I warned you it would be wisest to insure." He turned bruskly away from the agitated figure. "I will talk to you when I've finished. These gentlemen are in a hurry.”

"Not at all. No, certainly not." Hahn backed to the door. He would wait.

"Vy to insure," the old man was shrilling, "if to send by you is, like you said, so safe? Hein?" He leaned over and hammered the ink-stained desk with a dirty fist.

The man behind the receipt-book shifted his position. He got up, and the light in the globe he bore on his shoulders was extinguished as by the turn of a screw. Hands in pocket, he stood in a shadow above the green reflector.

"Safe money undoubtedly is in our hands," he said. "If," he repeated, "in one case out of a thousand it gets out of our hands, what then? Maybe you have heard there is a war? Maybe you can read?"

The old man gibbered with rage and offended pride; but the lines of defeat, which life had stamped on his face, deepened.

"Very well," said the other, with an effrontery that said he had marked the signs, "since you can read, you know who it is who robs the mails. Only twice since the war have they caught us, and we have sent tens of thousands of dollars. Ask the thieves of English where your money is!"

"Ai!" In the middle of the tirade the old man had turned away and spread out his hands in impotent grief.

"In war," the agent called after the broken figure "in war it is wise to insure."

"Gone! All gone! Ai!" The quavering old voice trailed down the dingy stair.

Hahn mumbled an excuse, and the two new clients withdrew despite vigorous protests. Once outside the room, Hahn plunged down the two flights as though in fear of his life. When Napier reached the street there was no trace anywhere of either the old man or of Hahn.

He recognized their collaboration in the account given in the New York papers, a few days later, of an exposure of one of the several concerns, all, it was hinted, under one (unnamed) management which, with no capital beyond a back room, a table, a chair, and a

clerk behind a book of receipt "blanks," raked in hundreds and thousands from gullible people who thought they were helping their friends in Germany.

CHAPTER XXV

"SCHWARZENBERG and her friends will be a little straitened for a while after this," said Taylor.

The expression "her friends" grated on Napier, and Napier was already in a restless, uncertain mood. Taylor had

noticed that. Significant as both men deemed the interview with the President, Napier had hurried over it to canvass and sift the Hahn adventure. Taylor, lounging on the sofa, sipped his liqueur at his ease. How did he know the bulk of the bureau's money went into Schwarzenberg's pocket? Two reasons. First, she 'd earned it. Languishing business doing a roaring trade from the moment she took hold. Second, the fellow she set to watch the rogues she 'd put in charge was a rogue himself.

"Oh, we've deserved well of our country in blocking up a few of those rat-holes," Taylor concluded.

"My interest in it," Napier paused to say, "was n't pure patriotism. It's made me pretty sick to see this Miss Ellis rather a friend of mine she is, very intimate with my chief's familyso hopelessly taken in. I had an idea this bureau business might show up-"

Taylor abandoned his lounging posture. He sat looking at Napier very steadily out of his greenish eyes.

"Oh, I quite understand," Napier went on, "the exposure is too discreet to be of any use to me."

"I should rather think so!" remarked Mr. Taylor.

"All the same, it is n't fair, leaving people like the Ellis's in the dark. The mother is off to the Pacific coast tomorrow." Napier was due at their hotel in half an hour. He was going to talk to them.

Still Taylor sat there, regarding his guest through a haze of cigar smoke.

"I thought," he said after a moment, "you mentioned that you had talked to them to the girl, anyway."

"I said I 'd told Miss Ellis what Sin

gleton found in Schwarzenberg's box. And God knows that ought to have been enough-"

"Too much," said Taylor, quietly. "Of course they passed it on to Schwarzenberg."

Napier doubted that.

"You don't know the Ellis's," he said, ignoring the limitations of his own acquaintance. No, his mistake had not been in telling too much. His mistake was that he had n't told the Ellis's enough. He was going to repair the mistake to-night.

"How are you going to do that?" Taylor asked in the same careful tone.

By telling them-telling the girl, anyway-that he 'd avoided telling her before the proved desperate character of this woman's accomplices.

A peculiar fixity came into Taylor's green eyes.

"You can't pass on information we 've put in your way here."

"Certainly not," returned Napier with some heat. "What I shall tell has nothing whatever to do with you. I sha'n't hint bureau." Again he consulted his watch. The time dragged.

"You 'd mind, I suppose, giving me an idea what you do mean to hint?”

"I sha'n't hint at all. And I 've come here to-night expressly to tell you, first, that I mean the Ellises to know about Gull Island and Greta von Schwarzenberg's connection with it and with the man we found there, sending wireless information to the enemy."

There was silence in the room.

"I dare say you are wondering why, in the face of the exigency, I 've put it off?"

Taylor had stopped smoking, but he said nothing.

"If I'd told her what I found Carl Pforzheim up to on Gull Island, she 'd have to know what became of Carl. Well, I'm now going to tell her."

"You can't do that!" Taylor had come to life. He leaned forward, blinking his white lashes as if a cinder had blown in his eye.

"Why can't I?"

"For one thing, telling the Ellis's would be as good as giving Schwarzenberg the key to the whole Gull Island business."