any one of the three would be to run the risk of almost certain detection, and in my case detection would mean hopeless incarceration for the poor remainder of my days.  To the world at large I may seem nothing but a simple country gentleman, living a dull life in a spot remote from all stirring interests.  But I may tell you, sir (in strictest confidence, mind), that although I stand a little aside from the noise and heat of the battle, I work for it with heart and brain as busily, and to better purpose, let us hope, than when I was a much younger man.  I am still a conspirator, and a conspirator I shall remain till Death taps me on the shoulder and serves me with his last great writ of habeas corpus.”

These words recurred to Ducie’s memory a day or two later when he found at the dinner-table two foreigners whom he had never seen before.

“Is it possible that these bearded gentlemen are also conspirators?” asked the Captain of himself.  “If so, their mode of life must be a very uncomfortable one.  It never seems to include the use of a razor, and very sparingly that of comb and brush.  I am glad that I have nothing to do with what Platzoff calls The Great Cause.”

But Captain Ducie was not a man to trouble himself with the affairs of other people unless his own interests were in some way affected thereby.  M. Paul Platzoff might have been mixed up with all the plots in Europe for anything the Captain cared:  it was a mere question of taste, and he never interfered with another man’s tastes when they did not clash with his own.  Besides, in the present case, his attention was claimed by what to him was a matter of far more serious interest.  From day to day he was anxiously waiting for news from the London bookseller who was making inquiries on his behalf as to the possibility of obtaining a copy of The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic.  Day passed after day till a fortnight had gone, and still there came no line from the bookseller.

Ducie’s impatience could no longer be restrained:  he wrote, asking for news.  The third day brought a reply.  The bookseller had at last heard of a copy.  It was in the library of a monastery in the Low Countries.  The coffers of the monastery needed replenishing; the abbot was willing to part with the book, but the price of it would be a sum equivalent to fifty guineas of English money.  Such was the purport of the letter.

To Captain Ducie, just then, fifty guineas were a matter of serious moment.  For a full hour he debated with himself whether or no he should order the book to be bought.

Supposing it duly purchased; supposing that it really proved to be the key by which the secret of the Russian’s MS. could be mastered; might not the secret itself prove utterly worthless as far as he, Ducie, was concerned?  Might it not be merely a secret bearing on one of those confounded political plots in which Platzoff was implicated—­a matter of moment no doubt to the writer, but of no earthly utility to anyone not inoculated with such March-hare madness?