"Again showing her astonishing cleverness."

"Just so--and, cleverer still, she held him until his death five years
later. Which death, despite the authorized report, was not natural: the
King of Valeria killed him in a sword duel in Ferida Palace on the
principal street of Dornlitz. The lady then betook herself to Paris and
took up her present life of extreme respectability--and political
usefulness to our friends of Wilhelm-strasse. In fact, I understand that
she has more than made good professionally, as well as fascinated at
least half a dozen Cabinet Ministers besides.

"Wilhelm-strasse?" Clarke queried.

Harleston nodded. "She is in the German Secret Service."

"They trust her?" Clarke marvelled.

"That is the most remarkable thing about her," said Harleston, "so far
as I know, she has never been false to the hand that paid her."

"Which, in her position, is the cleverest thing of all!" Clarke
remarked.

They passed the English Legation, a bulging, three-storied, red brick,
dormer-roofed atrocity, standing a few feet in from the sidewalk; ugly
as original sin, externally as repellent as the sidewalk and the narrow
little drive under the _porte-cochère_ are dirty.

"It's a pity," said Clarke, "that the British Legation cannot afford a