to read her thoughts for he, too, smiled a little.
"I am glad to see, Princess, that you have a little more confidence now: we shall be able to arrange things ever so much better. You are certainly much more calm, much less uneasy now. Oh, yes, you are!" he added, checking her protest. "Why, it is quite five minutes since you last tried to ring for help. We are getting on. Besides, I somehow can't picture the Princess Sonia Danidoff, wife of the Grand Chamberlain and cousin of His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias, allowing herself to be surprised alone with a man whom she did not know. If she were to ring, and someone came, how would the Princess account for the gentleman to whom she had accorded an audience in the most delightful, but certainly the most private of all her apartments?"
"But tell me," pleaded the unhappy woman, "how did you get in here?"
"That is not the question," the stranger replied. "The problem actually before us is, how am I to get out? For, of course, Princess, I shall not be so indelicate as to prolong my visit unduly, too happy only if you will permit me to repeat it on some other evening soon." He turned his head, and plunging his hand into the bath in the most natural manner possible, took out the thermometer which was floating on the perfumed water. "Thirty degrees, centigrade, Princess! Your bath is getting cold: you must get out!"
In her blank astonishment Princess Sonia did not know whether to laugh or cry. Was she alone with a monster who, after having played with her as a cat plays with a mouse, would suddenly turn and kill her? Or was this merely some irresponsible lunatic, whom chance alone had enabled to get into her rooms? Whatever the fact might be, the man's last words had made her aware that her bath really was getting cold. A shiver shook her whole frame, and yet ——
"Oh, go, please go!" she implored him.
He shook his head, an ironical smile in his eyes.
"For pity's sake," she entreated him again, "have mercy on a woman — a good woman!"
The man appeared to be considering.
"It is very embarrassing," he murmured, "and yet we must decide upon something soon, for I am most anxious you should not take a chill. Oh, it is very simple, Princess: of course you know the arrangement of everything here so well that you could find your dressing-gown at once, by merely feeling your way? We will put out the light, and then you will be able to get out of the bath in the dark without the least fear." He was on the very point of turning off the switch of the lamp, when he stopped abruptly and came back to the bath. "I was forgetting that exasperating bell," he said. "A movement is so very easily made: suppose you were to ring, by mere inadvertence, and regret it afterwards?" Putting his idea into action, the man made a quick cut with his razor and severed the two electric wires several feet above the ground. "That is excellent," he said. "By the way, I don't know where these other two wires go that run along the wall, but it is best to be on the safe side. Suppose there were another bell?" He lifted his razor once more and was trying to sever the electric wires when the steel blade cut the insulator and an alarming flash of light resulted. The man leaped into the air, and dropped his razor. "Good Lord!" he growled, "I suppose that will make you happy, madame: I have burnt my hand most horribly! These must be wires for the light! But no matter: I have still got one sound hand, and that will be enough for me to secure the darkness that you want. And anyhow, you can press the button of your bell as much as you like: it won't ring. So I am sure of a few more minutes in your company."
Sudden darkness fell upon the room. Sonia Danidoff hesitated for a moment and then half rose in the bath. All her pride as a great lady was in revolt. If she must defend her honour and her life, she was ready to do so, and despair would give her strength; but in any event she would be better out of the water, and on her feet, prepared. The darkness was complete, both in the bathroom and in the adjacent bedroom, and the silence was absolute. Standing up in the bath, Sonia Danidoff swept her arms round in a circle to feel for any obstacle. Her touch met nothing. She drew out one foot, and then the other, sprang towards the chair on which she had left her dressing-gown, slipped into it with feverish haste, slid her feet into her slippers, stood motionless for just a second and then, with sudden decision, moved to the switch by the door and turned on the light.
The man had gone from the bathroom, but taking two steps towards her bedroom Sonia Danidoff saw him smiling at her from the far end of that room.
"Sir," she said, "this — pleasantry — has lasted long enough. You must go. You shall, you shall!"
"Shall?" the stranger echoed. "That is a word that is not often used to me. But you are forgiven for not knowing that, Princess. I forgot for the moment that I have not been presented to you. But what is in your mind now?"
Between them was a little escritoire, on the top of which was lying the tiny inlaid revolver that Sonia Danidoff always carried when she went out at night. Could she but get that into her hands it would be a potent argument to induce this stranger to obey her. The Princess also knew that in the drawer of that escritoire which she could actually see half open, she had placed, only a few minutes before going in to her bath, a pocket-book filled with bank-notes for a hundred and twenty thousand francs, money she had withdrawn from the strong-room of the hotel that very morning in order to meet some bills next day. She looked at the drawer and wondered if the pocket-book was still there, or if this mysterious admirer of hers was only a vulgar hotel thief after all. The man had followed her eyes to the revolver.
"That is an unusual knick-knack to find in a lady's room, Princess," and he sprang in front of her as she was taking a step towards the escritoire, and took possession of the revolver. "Do not be alarmed," he added, noticing her little gesture of terror. "I would not do you an injury for anything in the world. I shall be delighted to give this back to you in a minute, but first let me render it harmless." He deftly slipped the six cartridges out of the barrel and then handed the now useless weapon to the Princess with a gallant little bow. "Do not laugh at my excess of caution: but accidents happen so easily!"
It was in vain that the Princess tried to get near her escritoire to ascertain if the drawer had been tampered with: the man kept between her and it all the time, still smiling, still polite, but watching every movement that she made. Suddenly he took his watch from his pocket.
"Two o'clock! Already! Princess, you will be vexed with me for having abused your hospitality to such an extent. I must go!" He appeared not to notice the sigh of relief that broke from her, but went on in a melodramatic tone. "I shall take my departure, not through the window like a lover, nor up the chimney like a thief, nor yet through a secret door behind the arras like a brigand of romance, but like a gentleman who has come to pay his tribute of homage and respect to the most enchanting woman in the world — through the door!" He made a movement as if to go, and came back. "And what do you think of doing now, Princess? Perhaps you will be angry with me? Possibly some unpleasant discovery, made after my departure, will raise some animosity in your breast against me? You might even ring, directly my back is turned, and alarm the staff, merely to embarrass me in my exit, and without paying any attention to the subsequent possible scandal. That is a complicated arrangement of bells and telephones beside your bed! It would be a pity to spoil such a pretty thing, and besides, I hate doing unnecessary damage!" The Princess's eyes turned once more to the drawer: it was practically certain that her money was not there now! But the man broke in again upon her thoughts. "What can I be thinking of? Just fancy my not having presented myself to you even yet! But as a matter of fact I do not want to tell you my name out loud: it is a romantic one, utterly out of keeping with the typically modern environment in which we are now. Ah, if we were only on the steep side of some mountain with the moon like a great lamp above us, or by the shore of some wild ocean, there would be some fascination in the proclamation of my identity in the silence of the night, or in the midst of lightning and thunder as the hurricane swept the seas! But here — in a third-floor suite of the Royal Palace Hotel, surrounded by telephones and electric light, and standing by a window overlooking the Champs Elysées — it would be a positive
