"Go on, please," Penelope murmured.

"The Prince is over here on some sort of an errand which it isn't
our business to understand," Mr. Harvey said. "I have heard it
rumored that it is a special mission entirely concerned with the
renewal of the treaty between England and Japan. However that may
be, I have sat here, and I have thought, and I have come to this
conclusion, ridiculous though it may seem to you at first. I
believe that somewhere behind the hand which killed and robbed
Hamilton Fynes and poor Dicky stood the benevolent shadow of our
friend Prince Maiyo."

"You have no proof?" she asked breathlessly.

"No proof at all," the Ambassador admitted. "I am scarcely in a
position to search for any. The conclusion I have come to has
been simply arrived at through putting a few facts together and
considering them in the light of certain events. In the first
place, we cannot doubt that the secret of those despatches
reached at once the very people whom we should have preferred to
remain in ignorance of them. Haven't I told you of the sudden
cessation of the war alarm in Japan, when once she was assured,
by means which she could not mistrust, that it was not the
intention of the American nation to make war upon her? The
subtlety of those murders, and the knowledge by which they were
inspired, must have come from some one in an altogether unique
position. You may be sure that no one connected with the Japanese
Embassy here would be permitted for one single second to take
part in any such illegal act. They know better than that, these
wily Orientals. They will play the game from Grosvenor Place