the kiss with the eyes. The Count had fine eyes--he could look much,
very much.... She smiled in retrospection.... Yet how did she drop that
bit of paper--and where?... Or did she drop it?... All the rest were
there. It was very peculiar.... She had referred to the De Neviers slip
on last Saturday--and she distinctly remembered that the Count's was
there at that time. Consequently she must have dropped it on Sunday when
she was studying the Rosny matter, and then she was in this room--and
Marston and Crenshaw and Sparrow were in the next room.--H-u-m.... Well,
the Count wrote in a woman's hand; and the finder cannot make anything
out of the words:

_À l'aube du jour_.




XV

IDENTIFIED


So it happened, that on the same day and practically at the same hour
Carpenter gave instructions looking to the pilfering of the French
private diplomatic cipher, Marston began to lay plans to test
Carpenter's venality, and Madeline Spencer betook herself to Union
Station to meet the man-in-the-case, whose face she had never seen, and
whose name she did not know.

She went a roundabout way, walking down F Street and stopping to make
some trifling purchases in two or three shops. She could not detect that