“Oh, monsieur, God for ever bless you!” exclaimed the broken old man, throwing himself on his knees before Cleek.

“Out with the light—­out with the light!” exclaimed he, ducking down suddenly.  “Were you mad to keep it burning till I came, with that”—­pointing to a huge bay window opening upon a balcony—­“uncurtained and the grounds, no doubt, alive with spies?”

Miss Lorne sprang to the table where the baron’s reading-lamp stood, jerked the cord of the extinguisher, and darkness enveloped the room, darkness tempered only by the faint gleams of the moon streaming over the balcony, and through the panes of the uncurtained window.

Cleek, on his knees beside the kneeling baron, whipped a tiny electric torch from his pocket, and, shielding its flare with his scooped hands, flashed it upon the old man’s face.

“Simple as rolling off a log—­exactly like your pictures,” he commented.  “I’ll ‘do’ you as easily as I ‘do’ Clodoche—­and I could ‘do’ him in the dark from memory.  Quick”—­snicking off the light of the electric torch and rising to his feet—­“into your dressing-room, baron.  I want that suit of clothes; I want that ribbon, that cross—­and I want them at once.  You’re a bit thicker-set than me, but I’ve got my Clodoche rig on underneath this, and it will fill out your coat admirably and make us as like as two peas.  Give me five minutes, Miss Lorne, and I promise you a surprise.”

He flashed out of sight with the baron as he ceased speaking; and Ailsa, creeping to the window and peering cautiously out, was startled presently by a voice at her elbow saying, in a tone of extreme agitation:  “Oh, mademoiselle, I fear, even yet I fear, that this Anglais monsieur attempts too much, and that the papier he is gone for ever.”

“Oh, no, baron, no!” she soothed, as she laid a solicitous hand upon his arm.  “Do believe in him; do have faith in him.  Ah, if you only knew—­”

“Thanks.  I reckon I shall pass muster!” interposed Cleek’s voice; and it was only then she realised.  “You’ll find the baron in the other room, Miss Lorne, looking a little grotesque in that grey suit of mine.  In with you, quickly; go with him through the other door, and get below before those fellows begin to stir.  Get out of the house as quietly and as expeditiously as you can.  With God’s help, I’ll meet you at the Hotel du Louvre in the morning, and put the missing fragment in the baron’s hands.”

“And may God give you that help!” she answered fervently as she moved towards the dressing-room door.  “Ah, what a man! what a man!”

Then, in a twinkling she was gone, and Cleek stood alone in the silent room.  Giving her and the baron time to get clear of the other one, he went in on tiptoe, locked the door through which they had passed, put the key in his pocket, and returned.  Going to the door which led from the main room into the corridor, he took the key from the lock of that, too, replacing it upon the outer side, and leaving the door itself slightly ajar.