Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed, clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still a ruling potentate.

But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr. Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house. Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in a cafÉ, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife. Mr. Paulo—George Paulo—was the son of this international union. His father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only thing Spanish about him was his face—smooth-shaven with small, black side whiskers—a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn, married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street, which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen comfortable.

Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were made into small investments; the investments, being judicious, prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores. Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among women—an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a glance at it.

Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride. No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her, everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo, proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his daughter.

Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public corridor.

'Dolores, my little girl'—he always called the splendidly? proportioned young woman 'my little girl'—'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'

'Have you told mother?'

'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there is anything in it.'

'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.

'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a woman your mother is.' He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I take it, are better than two.'

'All right, dear; go ahead.'

'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin—in number forty-seven—you know.'

'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house for a long time.'

'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too! He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'

'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at least—more than that.'

'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.

'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a fervent embrace—they were alone in the corridor—and Paulo seemed quite contented.

'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation, 'about this Captain Sarrasin?'

'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'

'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'

'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel—and so it is, dear, thanks to you.'

'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance, as the embrace had done in the other.

'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'

'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day, and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him here.'

'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'

'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as convenient for people—City people for instance—to go to Clapham as to come here.'

'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City, do they?'

'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.

'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little bit like City people.'

'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'

The girl reflected.

'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions, and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley—and all that kind of thing.'

'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever, tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'

'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'

'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it over—and I tell you I don't like it!'

'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently, 'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'

'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'

'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear—you frighten one.'

Paulo smiled.

'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all my suspicions.'

'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'

'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is. I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in Gloria. Now, he never told me that.'

'No? Well, go on.'

'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like General Boulanger—what do you think his staying on here means?'

'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone, and with eyes that sparkled.

'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now, again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a friend?'

'Dear, he has called on him.'

'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'

'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'

'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'

'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'

'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that, to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come to any conclusion one way or the other.'

'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'

Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still, even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.

'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,' Paulo went on to say. 'I may have my sympathies and you may have your sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off it—better maybe.'

'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'

'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'

'No, no, of course not. Well?'

'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I know—and I dare say you know—that a return to Gloria by his Excellency would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there, who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it as long as he is there—don't you see?'

'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'

'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'

'Quite true—quite—quite true.'

'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'

'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should like to deal with such scoundrels.

'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in your usual form to-day——'

'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really think people are plotting to kill—him?'

'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'

'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.

'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby tricks to be done short of that—there's spying and eavesdropping, to find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it——'

'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief—the tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.

'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean that it ever should be the way.'

'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea, indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of mouchards and spies, to find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as guests!'

'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'

'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and I dare say you are quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him. Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find out all about him.'

'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'

'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the art is there.'

'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said, half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering how women came to have such gifts.

While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him. She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to her for a moment.

Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at the head of the stairs.

'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so unceremoniously.'

'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'

'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin, who stays here a good deal of late?'

'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much, certainly; why do you ask?'

'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'

She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was almost startled.

'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave soldier and a man of honour.'

'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her eyes.

'But why do you ask?'

'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon find out about his being here as a spy.'

'A spy on whom?'

'On his Excellency, of course.'

'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'

'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer. Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she dismissed him.

Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at once came up without him giving it a start.

'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all sorts of rowdies—and spies, I fancy—and very likely hired assassins—here from all manner of South American places; and it can't be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and easy way.'

'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.

'How do you mean?'

'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger—at the Foreign Office?'

'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'

'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'

'Well, I may have had a hint—I don't know what ground there was for it—but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'

Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning he had just received from Dolores Paulo.

'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the hint.'

'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'

'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both hints came from the same man.'

'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'

'To my mind, much more serious.'

'Well, I may tell you in confidence—I mean, not to get into the confounded papers, that's all—the Home Secretary in fact, made no particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'

'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.

'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'

'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said. 'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'

'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively. 'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of way—at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to it?'

'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'

'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have—yes—quite lately.'

'What did he say?'

'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'

'But if someone walks behind him—to take care of him——'

'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.

'Yes; certainly. Why not?'

'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say, "I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the subject.'

'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens! Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London police system.'

'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.

'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like Ericson—himself an Englishman, too—by Jove! it forfeits in so far its claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you might put this to Ericson.'

'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'

'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite enough, I dare say. He wouldn't be on his guard, but you would, for him.'

'Oh, if he would let me, that would be all right enough. I am always pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by night.'

'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the grandest occupations of humanity.

'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers' Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon—and when I came nearer I saw it was his Excellency—and not a policeman or any other human being but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'

'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'

'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke—said he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up despondingly.

'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.

'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'

'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with him.'

'Oh—yes—how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a trembling of his lips.

'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him—I think he likes her—of course, it's only the influence of a clever child and all that sort of thing—but still I fancy that something might be made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and she is all devoted to his cause—and he is so kind to her and puts up so nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although she is my daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas—don't you think so, Hamilton?'

'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.

'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't say it merely to please me—and she likes you ever so much, that I know, for she has often told me—but I think I could make some use of her influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a personal favour—to her and to me, of course—leaving the Government altogether out of the question—as a personal favour to her and to me to take some care of himself—don't you think he could be induced? He is so chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a young woman like her.'

'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough—as indeed it is—who cares to attack me?—and even if it were not safe, what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his existence.

'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a man who is not her father.

Hamilton pulled himself together.

'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert—in fact, I don't know of any other idea that is worth thinking about.'

'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered. 'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'