“Why?  Don’t you know?”

“I think she means to run away.  She would not go back to her bed, but walked up and down, till I ventured to urge her to take rest, when she turned on me in a rage and bade me be gone.  Then I came to you.”

Victor took thought and finished with a dour nod.

“You have done well.  Return, keep watch, let me know if she leaves—­”

“The door is locked, Excellency:  she will not let me in.”

“Spy through the keyhole, then; or hide in one of the empty rooms across the corridor, and watch—­”

A muted mutter from the direction of the desk dried speech on Victor’s lips.  He started hastily toward the source of the sound, midway wheeled, and dismissed the maid with a brusque hand and monosyllable—­“Go!”—­then fairly pounced upon the telephone.

But all he heard, in the course of the ensuing five minutes, was the voice of the trunk-line operator advising him, to begin with, that she was ready to put him through to Westminster, then maddeningly punctuating the buzz and whine of the empty wire with her call of a talking doll—­“Are you theah?...  Are you theah?...  Are you theah?”

At length, however, the connection was established; and Victor, hearing the falsetto of Chou Nu’s second-uncle cheerily respond to the operator’s query, unceremoniously broke in: 

“Shaik Tsin?  It is I, Number One.  And the devil’s own time I’ve had getting through.  Why didn’t you answer more promptly?  What’s the matter?  Has anything gone wrong?”

“All is well, Excellency, as well as you could wish, knowing what you know.”

Profound relief found voice in a sigh from Victor’s heart.

“You got my messages, then?  Nogam delivered them?”

“So I understand.  I myself did not see him, Excellency.  The man Sturm—­”

On that name the voice died away in what Victor fancied was a gasp that might have been of either fright or pain.

“Hello!” he prompted.  “Are you there, Shaik Tsin?  I say!  Are you there?  Why don’t you answer?”

He paused:  no sound for seconds that dragged like so many minutes, then of a sudden a deadened noise like the slam of a door heard afar—­or a pistol shot at some distance from the telephone in the study.

Further and frantic importuning of the cold and unresponsive wire presently was silenced by a new voice, little like that of Shaik Tsin.

“Hello?  Who’s there?  I say:  that you, Prince Victor?”

Involuntarily Victor cried:  “Karslake!” “What gorgeous luck!  I’ve been wanting a word with you all evening.”

“What has happened?  Why did Shaik Tsin—?”

“Oh, most unfortunate about him—­frightfully sorry, but it really couldn’t be helped, if he hadn’t fought back we wouldn’t have had to shoot him.  You see, the old devil murdered Sturm to-night, for some reason I daresay you understand better than I:  we found a paper on the beggar, written in Chinese, apparently an order for his assassination signed by you.  Half a mo’:  I’ll read it to you ...”