I looked up at her quickly.  What did she mean?  At first she had come to be saved herself.  “You must save him!” she implored.

Our door buzzer sounded.

She gazed about with a hunted look, as if she felt that some one had even now pursued her and found out.

“What shall I do?” she whispered.  “Where shall I go?”

“Quick—­in here.  No one will know,” urged Kennedy, opening the door to his room.  He paused for an instant, hurriedly.  “Tell me—­ have you and this other woman met the Baron yet?  How far has it gone?”

The look she gave him was peculiar.  I could not fathom what was going on in her mind.  But there was no hesitation about her answer.  “Yes,” she replied, “I—­we have met him.  He is to come back to New York from Washington to-day—­this afternoon—­to arrange a private loan of five million dollars with some bankers secretly.  We were to see him to-night—­a quiet dinner, after an automobile ride up the Hudson—­”

“Both of you?” interrupted Craig.

“Yes—­that—­that other woman and myself,” she repeated, with a peculiar catch in her voice.  “To-night was the time fixed in the drawing for the—­”

The word stuck in her throat.  Kennedy understood.  “Yes, yes,” he encouraged, “but who is the other woman?”

Before she could reply, the buzzer had sounded again and she had retreated from the door.  Quickly Kennedy closed it and opened the outside door.

It was our old friend Burke of the Secret Service.

Without a word of greeting, a hasty glance seemed to assure him that Kennedy and I were alone.  He closed the door himself, and, instead of sitting down, came close to Craig.

“Kennedy,” he blurted out in a tone of suppressed excitement, “can I trust you to keep a big secret?”

Craig looked at him reproachfully, but said nothing.

“I beg your pardon—­a thousand times,” hastened Burke.  “I was so excited, I wasn’t thinking—­”

“Once is enough, Burke,” laughed Kennedy, his good nature restored at Burke’s crestfallen appearance.

“Well, you see,” went on the Secret Service man, “this thing is so very important that—­well, I forgot.”

He sat down and hitched his chair close to us, as he went on in a lowered, almost awestruck tone.

“Kennedy,” he whispered, “I’m on the trail, I think, of something growing out of these terrible conditions in Europe that will tax the best in the Secret Service.  Think of it, man.  There’s an organization, right here in this city, a sort of assassin’s club, as it were, aimed at all the powerful men the world over.  Why, the most refined and intellectual reformers have joined with the most red-handed anarchists and—­”

“Sh! not so loud,” cautioned Craig.  “I think I have one of them in the next room.  Have they done anything yet to the Baron?”

It was Burke’s turn now to look from one to the other of us in unfeigned surprise that we should already know something of his secret.