“Monsieur, you are to me the most astonishing of men,” said the Count, noticing how he patted the puppy and settled it in his lap as the carriage resumed its even rolling down the broad, beautiful avenue.  “One moment upholding the rights of birth, the next rebelling against the injustice of it.  Are your sympathies with the unfortunate so keen, monsieur, that even this stray cur may claim them?”

“Perhaps,” replied Cleek enigmatically.  “You must wait and see, Count.  Just now I pity him for his forlornity; to-morrow—­next day—­a week hence—­I may hold it a better course to put an end to his hopeless lot by chloroforming him into a painless and peaceful death.”

“Monsieur, I cannot follow you—­you speak in riddles.”

“I deal in riddles, Count; you must wait for the solution of them, I’m afraid.”

“I wish I could grasp the solution of one which puzzles me a great deal, monsieur.  What is it that has happened to your countenance?  You have done nothing to put on a disguise; yet, since we left the train and entered the landau, some subtle change has occurred.  What is it?  How has it come about?  The night before last, when I saw you for the first time, your face was one that impressed me with a sense of familiarity—­now, monsieur, you are like a different man.”

“I am a different man, Count.  Like puppy, here, I am a waif and a stray; yet, at the same time, I have my purpose and am part of a carefully-laid scheme.”

The Count made no reply.  He could not comprehend the man at all, and at times—­but for the world-wide reputation of him—­he would have believed him insane.  Not a question as to the great and important case he was on, but merely incomprehensible remarks, trifling fancies, apparently aimless whims!  Two nights ago a pot of beef extract; to-day a mongrel puppy; and all the time the hopes of a kingdom, the future of a monarch resting in his hands!

For twenty minutes longer the landau rolled on; then it came to a halt under the broad porte cochere of the Villa Irma, and two minutes after that Cleek and the Count stood in the presence of Madame Tcharnovetski, her purblind associate, and her retinue of servant-guards.

A handsome woman, this madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the tar-black eyes and the twilight coloured tresses of Northern Russia; bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and calm-blooded as a professional gambler.  It had been her whim that all the women of the Count’s family should be banished from the house during her stay; that the great salon of the villa—­a wondrous apartment, hung in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier—­should be put at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her sleeping apartment and his.