leave the house without making some apology, and, if the worst should
come, I could show my card. They could hardly believe that a member of
an Embassy had any designs upon the hat-rack.

"The room in which I stood was dimly lighted, but I could see that,
like the hall, it was hung with heavy Persian rugs. The corners were
filled with palms, and there was the unmistakable odor in the air of
Russian cigarettes, and strange, dry scents that carried me back to
the bazaars of Vladivostock. Near the front windows was a grand piano,
and at the other end of the room a heavily carved screen of some black
wood, picked out with ivory. The screen was overhung with a canopy of
silken draperies, and formed a sort of alcove. In front of the alcove
was spread the white skin of a polar bear, and set on that was one of
those low Turkish coffee tables. It held a lighted spirit-lamp and two
gold coffee cups. I had heard no movement from above stairs, and it
must have been fully three minutes that I stood waiting, noting these
details of the room and wondering at the delay, and at the strange
silence.

"And then, suddenly, as my eye grew more used to the half-light, I
saw, projecting from behind the screen as though it were stretched
along the back of a divan, the hand of a man and the lower part of his
arm. I was as startled as though I had come across a footprint on a
deserted island. Evidently the man had been sitting there since I had
come into the room, even since I had entered the house, and he had
heard the servant knocking upon the door. Why he had not declared
himself I could not understand, but I supposed that possibly he was a
guest, with no reason to interest himself in the Princess's other
visitors, or perhaps, for some reason, he did not wish to be observed.
I could see nothing of him except his hand, but I had an unpleasant