"You understand that it is wholly irregular for us to let such a matter
pass without acting--" said the purser.

"It would serve no purpose, and might do harm. I will take the
responsibility."

And John Armitage made a memorandum in his notebook:

"_Zmai_--; _travels as Peter Ludovic_."

Armitage carried the envelope which he had cut from Chauvenet's coat
pinned into an inner pocket of his waistcoat, and since boarding the
_King Edward _he had examined it twice daily to see that it was intact.
The three red wax seals were in blank, replacing those of like size that
had originally been affixed to the envelope; and at once after the attack
on the dark deck he opened the packet and examined the papers--some
half-dozen sheets of thin linen, written in a clerk's clear hand in
black ink. There had been no mistake in the matter; the packet which
Chauvenet had purloined from the old prime minister at Vienna had come
again into Armitage's hands. He was daily tempted to destroy it and
cast it in bits to the sea winds; but he was deterred by the remembrance
of his last interview with the old prime minister.

"Do something for Austria--something for the Empire." These phrases
repeated themselves over and over again in his mind until they rose and
fell with the cadence of the high, wavering voice of the Cardinal
Archbishop of Vienna as he chanted the mass of requiem for Count
Ferdinand von Stroebel.