been charged to get a receipt for it from the Ambassador himself, so I
started at once for Nice The fact that Monte Carlo is not two thousand
miles from Nice may have had something to do with making me carry out
my instructions so carefully. "Now, how the Princess Zichy came to
find out about the necklace I don't know, but I can guess. As you have
just heard, she was at one time a spy in the service of the Russian
government. And after they dismissed her she kept up her acquaintance
with many of the Russian agents in London. It is probable that through
one of them she learned that the necklace was to be sent to Moscow,
and which one of the Queen's Messengers had been detailed to take it
there. Still, I doubt if even that knowledge would have helped her if
she had not also known something which I supposed no one else in the
world knew but myself and one other man. And, curiously enough, the
other man was a Queen's Messenger too, and a friend of mine. You must
know that up to the time of this robbery I had always concealed my
despatches in a manner peculiarly my own. I got the idea from that
play called 'A Scrap of Paper.' In it a man wants to hide a certain
compromising document. He knows that all his rooms will be secretly
searched for it, so he puts it in a torn envelope and sticks it up
where any one can see it on his mantel shelf. The result is that the
woman who is ransacking the house to find it looks in all the unlikely
places, but passes over the scrap of paper that is just under her
nose. Sometimes the papers and packages they give us to carry about
Europe are of very great value, and sometimes they are special makes
of cigarettes, and orders to court dressmakers. Sometimes we know what
we are carrying and sometimes we do not. If it is a large sum of money
or a treaty, they generally tell us. But, as a rule, we have no
knowledge of what the package contains; so, to be on the safe side, we
naturally take just as great care of it as though we knew it held the
terms of an ultimatum or the crown jewels. As a rule, my confreres