Part 7 (1/2)

This is what Mr. Pike read:

My very good friend:

I have protected you, not because you deserve protection, but because I like you very much. You must not come to the palace grounds again. They are now under double guard and, if I attempted to meet you, no doubt a whole company of our big soldiers would surround you and surely you could not overcome so many powerful men. I am thinking only of your safety. I beg you to leave Morovenia at once. Your danger is greater than you can imagine. What more can I say, except that I shall always remember you? Sincerely,

K.

Mr. Pike read it carefully three times and then told himself aloud that it was not what he would precisely term a love-letter.

”I may have made an impression, but certainly not a ten-strike,” he thought to himself, as he folded up the missive and put it into the most sacred compartment of his Russia-leather pocketbook, along with the letter of credit.

”I fear me that the incident is closed,” he said. ”I would stay here one year if I thought there was a chance of seeing her again, but if she wants me to fly I guess I had better fly.”

That evening, after an earnest controversy with the manager over a very complicated bill, studded with ”extras,” Mr. Alexander H. Pike, accompanied by dragoman, leather trunks, hat-boxes and hold-alls, drove away to the transcontinenta express, and slept soundly while crossing the dangerous frontier.

Possibly he would not have slept so soundly if he had known that at four o'clock that afternoon the Princess Kalora had been idling her time in the palace garden, walking back and forth near the high wall.

She had told him not to come, and of course he would not come. No one could be so audacious and foolhardy as to invite destruction after being solemnly warned--and yet, if he _did_ come, she wanted to be there to speak to him again and rebuke him and tell him not to come a third time.

She went back to her apartment much relieved and intensely disappointed.

Such is the perverseness of the feminine nature, even in Morovenia.

IX

AS TO WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

About the time that Mr. Pike arrived in Vienna, and after Kalora had been in voluntary retirement for some forty-eight hours, the famous Koldo, head of the secret police, came into possession of a most important clue.

Having searched for two days, without finding the trail of the criminal with the black mustache and the German accent, he bethought himself of the wisdom of going to the garden where the intruder had engaged in a desperate struggle with the two guards. Possibly he would discover incriminating footprints. Instead, he found some sc.r.a.ps of paper, with printing of a foreign character.

By questioning the guards he learned that these tatters had come from a printed book which the mysterious stranger had carried, and which he never relinquished even while reducing his foes to insensibility.

Koldo put these pieces of paper into a strong envelope, which he sealed and marked ”Exhibit A,” and delivered his precious find to the Governor-General.

While Mr. Pike sat in Ronacher's at Vienna, watching a most entertaining vaudeville performance, Count Selim Malagaski was in his library, conferring with the wise Popova.

”How did he escape?” asked Count Malagaski again and again, shaking his head. ”The police have searched every corner of the town, and can find no one answering the description.”

”Have you questioned Kalora again?”

”Yes, and she now remembers that he had a very heavy scar over his right eye. Her description and these few sc.r.a.ps of paper torn from the book he was carrying are all that we have to guide us in our search.”

The Governor-General held up the several remnants of a ten-cent magazine.

”It is in English; I read it badly.”

He gave the torn pages to the old tutor, and Popova, picking up the first, read as follows:

What is the great danger that threatens the American woman? It is _obesity_. It is well known that ninety-nine per cent of all the women in the United States are striving to reduce their weight. For all such we have a message of hope. Write to Madam Clarissa and she----