“Of course, Penelope,” he said, “I don’t expect you to tell me anything which you feel that you oughtn’t to.  There is one thing, however, which I must ask you.”

She nodded.

“Well?”

“I should like to know what the mischief my being in the diplomatic service has to do with it?”

“If I explained that,” she answered, “I should be telling you everything I haven’t quite made up my mind to do that yet.”

“Tell me this?” he asked.  “Would that hint which he dropped when he was here last help you to solve the mystery of his murder?”

“It might,” she admitted.

“Then I think,” he said, “apart from any other reason, you ought to tell somebody.  The police at present don’t seem to have the ghost of a clue.”

“They are not likely to find one,” she answered, “unless I help them.”

“Say, Penelope,” he exclaimed, “you are not in earnest?”

“I am,” she assured him.  “It is exactly as I say.  I believe I am one of the few people who could put the police upon the right track.”

“Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?” he asked.

“That’s just what I can’t make up my mind about,” she told him.  “However, I have brought you out with me expecting to hear something, and I am going to tell you this.  That last time he came to England—­the time he went to St. Petersburg and twice to Berlin—­he came on government business.”

The young man looked, for a moment, incredulous.

“Are you sure of that, Pen?” he asked.  “It doesn’t sound like our people, you know, does it?”

“I am quite sure,” she declared confidently.  “You are a very youthful diplomat, Dicky, but even you have probably heard of governments who employ private messengers to carry despatches which for various reasons they don’t care to put through their embassies.”

“Why, that’s so, of course, over on this side,” he agreed.  “These European nations are up to all manner of tricks.  But I tell you frankly, Pen, I never heard of anything of the sort being done from Washington.”

“Perhaps not,” she answered composedly.  “You see, things have developed with us during the last twenty-five years.  The old America had only one foreign policy, and that was to hold inviolate the Monroe doctrine.  European or Asiatic complications scarcely even interested her.  Those times have passed, Dicky.  Cuba and the Philippines were the start of other things.  We are being drawn into the maelstrom.  In another ten years we shall be there, whether we want to be or not.”

The young man was deeply interested.

“Well,” he admitted, “there’s a good deal in what you say, Penelope.  You talk about it all as though you were a diplomat yourself.”

“Perhaps I am,” she answered calmly.  “A stray young woman like myself must have something to occupy her thoughts, you know.”

He laughed.

“That’s not bad,” he asserted, “for a girl whom the New York Herald declared, a few weeks ago, to be one of the most brilliant young women in English society.”