your Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As I told you, I'd just sent him
word in the usual cypher and through the usual channels, that I couldn't
do what he wanted. He'd offered me eight thousand pounds to undertake
the service, and four more if I succeeded. I believed I could succeed if
I tried. And with the few thousands I'd saved up, and selling such
jewels as I had, I could make up the sum Raoul had been told to ask for
the necklace. Then he could give it to the Duchess, and she need never
know that the diamonds had been stolen. All that night I lay awake
thinking, thinking. Next day, at a time when I knew Raoul would be
working in his office, I went to see him there, and cheered him up as
well as I could. I told him that in a few days I hoped to have eighteen
or twenty thousand pounds in my hands--all for him. To let him have the
money would make me happier than I'd ever been. At first he said he
wouldn't take it from me--I knew he would say that! But, at last, after
I'd cried and begged, and persuaded, he consented; only it was to be a
loan, and some how, some time, he would pay me back. In that office
there are several great safes; and when we had grown quite happy and gay
together, I made Raoul tell me which was the most important of
all--where the really sacred and valuable things were kept. He laughed
and pointed out the most interesting one--the one, he said, which held
all the deepest secrets of French foreign diplomacy. I was sure then
that the thing I had to get for the British Foreign Secretary must be
there, though it was such a new thing that it couldn't have been
anywhere for long. 'There are three keys to that safe,' said Raoul. 'One
is kept by the President; one is always with the Foreign Secretary; this
is the third'; and he showed me a strange little key different to any I
had seen before. 'Oh, do let me have a peep at these wonderful papers,'
I pleaded with him. Before coming I had planned what to do. Round my
throat I wore a string of imitation pearls, which I'd put on for a
special purpose. But they were pretty, and so well made that only an