He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door.  For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina.  At last the siege was raised.  After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who quietly asked his name and business.

“I have a letter for you, Mr. Karospina—­if you are that gentleman—­and as I have put myself to much trouble in getting to you, I think I deserve a little consideration.”

“A letter, my worthy sir!  And for me?  Who told you to come here?  How do you know my name?” This angered the young man.

“It is from Prince K. The Prince.  Now are you satisfied?” he added, as his questioner turned red and then paled as if the news were too startling for his nerves.

“Come in, come in!” he cried.  “Mila, Mila, here is a guest.  Fetch tea to the laboratory.”  He literally dragged Shannon within doors and led him across a stone corridor to a large room, but not before he had bolted and barred the entrance to his mysterious fortress.  Seeing the other’s look of quiet amusement, he laughed himself:—­

“Wolves, my dear sir, wolves, human wolves, prowl on the beach at night, and while I have no treasures, it is well to be on the safe side.  Mila, Mila, the tea, the tea.”  There was a passionate intensity in his utterance that attracted Gerald from his survey of the chamber.  He saw that in the light Karospina was a much older man than he had at first supposed.  But the broad shoulders, the thick chest, and short, powerful figure and bullet head belied his years.  Incredulously his visitor asked himself if this were the wonderful, the celebrated Karospina, chemist, revolutionary, mystic, nobleman, and millionnaire.  A Russian, he knew that—­yet he looked more like the monk one sees depicted on the canvases of the early Flemish painters.  His high, wide brow and deep-set, dark eyes proclaimed the thinker; and because of his physique, he might have posed as a prize-fighter.

He took the letter and read it as the door opened and the girl came in with the tea.  She wore her hair braided in two big plaits which hung between her shoulders, and her bold, careless glance from eyes sea-blue made the Irishman forget his host and the rigours of the afternoon.  A Russian beauty, with bare, plump arms, and dressed in peasant costume; but—­a patrician!  Her fair skin and blond hair filled him with admiration.  What the devil!—­he thought, and came near saying it aloud.

“My niece, Princess Mila Georgovics, Mr. Shannon.”  Gerald acknowledged the introduction with his deepest bow.  He was dazzled.  He had come to this dreary place to talk politics.  But now this was out of the question.  And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince.  He told Mila this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted.  In the meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the apartment.  Apparently he had forgotten the others.