He turned the little piece of cambric over and over, examining it
slowly, with a heavy Germanic cunning. He had taken this handkerchief
from the body of the nameless rider who was now lying alone on the
steppe twelve miles away.

Steinmetz returned to the large refreshment room, and ordered the waiter
to bring him a glass of Benedictine, which he drank slowly and
thoughtfully.

Then he went toward the large black stove which stands in the railway
restaurant at Tver. He opened the door with the point of his boot. The
wood was roaring and crackling within. He threw the handkerchief in and
closed the door.

"It is as well, mon prince," he muttered, "that I found this, and not
you."




CHAPTER III


DIPLOMATIC

"All that there is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe,"
M. Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening,
apropos of the great gathering at the French Embassy, and the mot had
gone the round of the room.