“This way,” said the girl, motioning toward the stairs that led upward.

Barney had turned toward her as she struck the match, obtaining an excellent view of her features.  They were clear-cut and regular.  Her eyes were large and very dark.  Dark also was her hair, which was piled in great heaps upon her finely shaped head.  Altogether the face was one not easily to be forgotten.  Barney could scarce have told whether the girl was beautiful or not, but that she was striking there could be no doubt.

He preceded her up the stairway to a door at the top.  At her direction he turned the knob and entered a small room in which was a cot, an ancient dresser and a single chair.

“You will remain here,” she said, “until Stefan returns.  Stefan will know what to do with you.”  Then she left him, taking the light with her, and Barney heard a key turn in the lock of the door after she had closed it.  Presently her footfalls died out as she descended to the lower floors.

“Anyhow,” thought the American, “this is better than the Austrians.  I don’t know what Stefan will do with me, but I have a rather vivid idea of what the Austrians would have done to me if they’d caught me sneaking through the alleys of Burgova at midnight.”

Throwing himself on the cot Barney was soon asleep, for though his predicament was one that, under ordinary circumstances might have made sleep impossible, yet he had so long been without the boon of slumber that tired nature would no longer be denied.

When he awoke it was broad daylight.  The sun was pouring in through a skylight in the ceiling of his tiny chamber.  Aside from this there were no windows in the room.  The sound of voices came to him with an uncanny distinctness that made it seem that the speakers must be in this very chamber, but a glance about the blank walls convinced him that he was alone.

Presently he espied a small opening in the wall at the head of his cot.  He rose and examined it.  The voices appeared to be coming from it.  In fact, they were.  The opening was at the top of a narrow shaft that seemed to lead to the basement of the structure—­apparently once the shaft of a dumb-waiter or a chute for refuse or soiled clothes.

Barney put his ear close to it.  The voices that came from below were those of a man and a woman.  He heard every word distinctly.

“We must search the house, fraulein,” came in the deep voice of a man.

“Whom do you seek?” inquired a woman’s voice.  Barney recognized it as the voice of his captor.

“A Serbian spy, Stefan Drontoff,” replied the man.  “Do you know him?”

There was a considerable pause on the girl’s part before she answered, and then her reply was in such a low voice that Barney could barely hear it.

“I do not know him,” she said.  “There are several men who lodge here.  What may this Stefan Drontoff look like?”

“I have never seen him,” replied the officer; “but by arresting all the men in the house we must get this Stefan also, if he is here.”