“No; that was not their object.  I’ve thought over it many, many times since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows his ciphers to remain behind.  When he leaves his post he always deposits those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port.  They’d surely ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet.  The affair was a risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions.”

“But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma.  It was he who succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg’s sphere of influence to Petersburg.”

“Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister motive underlying it.”

“She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street, and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise to him, and that the secret was still safe.”

“Exactly.  And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain.  He therefore intends to silence her.”

“What! to kill her, you mean?” I gasped, in quick apprehension.

“Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see,” Jack replied, adding:  “He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it would not be brought home to him.  Only he, no doubt, fears you, because you have found her, and are in love with her.”

I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the bomb and the knife.

I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed, for some curious reason, disinclined to tell.  All I could gather was that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel had acted as an entirely innocent agent.  What the conspiracy was, or what was its motive, I could not discern.  I was as far off the solution of the problem as ever.

“We must first find Muriel,” he declared, when I pressed him to tell me everything he knew.  “There are facts you have told me which negative my own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth.”

“But surely you know where she is?  She writes to you,” I said.

“The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been seen down at Eastbourne.”

“But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?”

“Yes, a secret one.  I have written and made an appointment, but she has not kept it.  She has been prevented, of course.  She may be with her parents, and unable to come to London.”