Daunt accompanied his chief that evening to a dinner at the Nobles' Club—a "stag," for conventional functions had been discontinued since the royal death had cast a pall over the stay of the Squadron. As they drove thither a nearer shadow was over the Ambassador's spirits. His thoughts would stray to Barbara and her misfortune, which seemed so deep and irreparable. He had eventually accepted his wife's diagnosis as to Daunt's tendresse, but he had a confidence that his Secretary of Embassy, though hard-hit, would bear no scars. He could not guess all that lay beneath the brave domino Daunt was wearing.

The affair was a late one, with various native divertisements: top-spinners, painters whose exquisite brush-etchings, done in a few seconds, were given as mementoes to the guests, and jugglers who, utterly without paraphernalia, caused live fowl to appear in impossible places. Toward the close the Ambassador found himself seated beside the Minister of Marine.

"Very clever," he said, as a Chinese pheasant flew out of an inverted opera-hat. "I almost believe he could produce my missing dog if he were properly urged."

"Have you lost one?" asked the Admiral. "I'm sorry."

The Ambassador laughed. "It was really something of a relief," he said, and told the story of the Russian wolf-hound which had so curiously disappeared on the evening of Doctor Bersonin's call. "The oddest thing about it," he ended, "is that, though the name of the Embassy was on his collar, nothing has been heard of him."

The two men chatted for some time on things in general, the conversation veering to the Squadron. The Ambassador thought the other seemed somewhat distrait. At two the affair ended and the carriages drew up to the windy porte-cochÈre. There was a confidential matter which the Ambassador wished to speak of with his host. He had mentioned it, but no fitting opportunity had occurred. At the door the Admiral recalled it, suggesting with a quizzical reference to the other's American fondness for late hours that, as his house was on the way, the Ambassador stop there, while they had their talk over a cigar. The latter, therefore, departed in the Admiral's carriage, and Daunt drove alone to the Embassy, directing the coachman to go in a half-hour for his chief.

In the past three days Daunt had fought a constant battle. Every feature of that night at Nikko was stamped indelibly on his mind. The passionate resentment, the agony of protest that had come to him at the ball, when he had received the torn fragments of his letter to Barbara, returned in double force, opposing a strange, new sense of shame that his thought should follow her even into the tragic shadow where she now dwelt. Yet—for fancy will not be denied—his brain would again and again circle the same somber treadmill:

We have done those things which we ought not to have done! He seemed to hear her say it on the dark hillside. Her voice had had that in it which, against his will, had thrilled him. What had she done that she regretted? She had spoken of the day in the cave at Enoshima—had seemed to wish him to believe that she had not then been acting a part. Could anything have happened in that one day's interval so utterly to change her? She had been unhappy, for he had surprised her weeping. What was it she had wished to "confess?" So to-night his gloomy reflections ran—to their submerging wave of self-reproach.

He let himself into the Chancery with his latch-key, to get his evening's mail. A telegram had been laid on his desk. It was a cipher from Washington, and he opened the safe at once and from the inner drawer took out the official code books. He sat down at one of the desks and began the decoding of the text. For a time he worked mechanically—as it were, with but one-half of his brain—tracing each group of figures in the bulky volume, transposing by the secret key, dragging, in the complicated process, sense and coherency from the meaningless digits. Then he sat staring at the result:

"Large short selling to-day in European bourses and in New York (comma) unexplainable on usual grounds (comma) is creating anxiety (period) Can scarcely be explained except on hypothesis that secret group of dealers have suddenly come into possession of information which leads them to consider the international situation ominous (period) Newspapers in ignorance of anything extraordinary (period) London and Paris evidently puzzled (period) Has situation developed new phases and in your opinion does it contain possible element of danger (period) Hasten reply."

A full five minutes Daunt sat motionless, revolving the matter in all its bearings. An answer must be sent without delay. A part of that answer might be found in the departure of the Squadron. The newspapers had announced its receipt of sailing-orders, but the news had yet to be verified. The Naval Minister could give this verification.

He went at once to the stables, where the carriage was about to start for the Ambassador. He sprang in. A little later he was at the Admiral's official residence and his chief was perusing the message. After a moment's thought the Ambassador read it aloud.

Daunt had made a move to retire, but the Admiral stopped him.

"Pray don't go yet," he said. "There is something I should like to say on this matter, and I count on your discretion, Mr. Daunt, as on His Excellency's. Since the American Government attaches significance to that peculiar incident, I think no harm can come from an exchange of opinion. It may help us both." He paused a moment, his foot tapping the floor.

"The news contained in that telegram," he continued presently, "for the past two days has caused my Government great concern. Your Excellency will understand when I say that the particular objects of this attack (if I may so call it) are precisely those securities which would suffer most were Japan's peace or prosperity threatened. There has seemed to be a concurrence in it not purely fortuitous. Back of this selling is no mere opinion—it is too assured for that. Some interest or individual abroad is apparently banking heavily on a belief that Japan is about to enter a period of stress!"

The Ambassador spoke for the first time. "Abroad?" he said shrewdly.

The Admiral looked at him an instant without speaking. His expression changed swiftly. He rose and went quickly to the telephone in the next room.

"He is talking with the Secret Service," said Daunt, in a low tone.

In a few moments their host returned. There was something in his face that made the Ambassador's keen eye kindle. "The suggestion was most pertinent," he said. "There is one man in Japan who, exclusive of the commercial codes, has sent in the past two days cipher telegrams to New York, London and Berlin."

He took a short turn about the room in some agitation. "Your Excellency," he said, stopping short, "I make a confident of you. That man is Doctor Bersonin."

The Ambassador started.

"Pray absolve me," said the Admiral quickly, "from an apparent indiscretion. Doctor Bersonin is no longer in the Japanese service. His contract expired at noon to-day. It will not be renewed. As one of my Government I speak to you, as the representative of your Government, concerning a private individual whose acts are in the purview of us both. The circumstances are extraordinary, but I think the occasion justifies this conversation."

He rang a bell sharply and his private secretary entered. "Bring me," he said in Japanese, "report number eleven of Lieutenant Ishida Hetaro."

When it was brought, he turned to a leaf underscored scored with red. "Your Excellency," he said, "interested me profoundly this evening by the account of the disappearance of your dog. I am going to ask Mr. Daunt—who reads Japanese so fluently—to give a running translation of this."

Daunt took the manuscript—as perfectly executed as an inscription in Uncial Greek—and began to read. As he translated, his breath came more quickly, and the Ambassador leaned forward across the table. Yet the words chronicled nothing more than the curious disappearance from the laboratory of a tiny song-bird—and a steel pen-rest. The close of the narrative drew an exclamation from the Ambassador's lips. For it told of feathery sprays of reddish-brown powder on the expert's desk, and he seemed to see himself, his study lamp in his hand, bending over curious whorls of dust on his own piazza.

"May I ask," said the Admiral, "whether the episode of the dog suggested to Your Excellency the possibility that your caller might himself be able to solve the mystery of the animal's disappearance?"

The Ambassador's reply came slowly, but with deliberate emphasis:

"It did. The more so, from our previous conversation. In my study I have the model of a Dreadnaught. We were discussing this, and the doctor described the fighting machine of the future—an atomic engine which should utilize some newly discovered law of molecular action, a machine that might be carried in a single hand, to which a battle-ship would be, as he expressed it, 'mere silly shreds of steel.' He spoke, I thought, with a strange confidence that seemed almost unbalanced. In connection with the conversation, the later incident, I confess, left a deep impression. Yet the idea it suggested was so incredible that I have never spoken of it to any one before."

"Suppose," said the Admiral, "that the man we are discussing has actually constructed such a machine. What possible connection can there be between that and a confidence in some near event which will lower Japan's credit in the eyes of the world?"

Before the Ambassador replied there was the sound of voices outside—a sudden commotion and a woman's agitated protestations. The secretary came in hurriedly and whispered to the Admiral. A door slammed in the hall, there was the sound of a short struggle, and a girl burst into the room. She threw herself at the Admiral's feet, panting broken sentences. Her kimono was torn and muddied, her blue-black hair was loosened, and her face white and pitifully working.

A man had darted after her—he was the Admiral's aide. He grasped her arm. "She has been at the Department," he said in English, with a glance at the visitors. "They detained her there, but she got away. They have telephoned a warning that she might attempt to see you."

She struggled against him, her eyes sweeping the circle about her with a passionate entreaty. Suddenly she saw the Ambassador. She lifted her face, swollen with crying, to him:

"You—nod know me—Haru?" she faltered, "nÉ? Say so!"

"Haru!" he exclaimed. Then, turning to the Admiral, "I know the child," he said. "She was companion to one of our house-guests till a week ago, when she disappeared from her home."

His host made an exclamation of pity. "It is no-byo, no doubt," he said, using the word for the strange Japanese brain-fever which is akin to madness. "She must be cared for at once." He leaned and spoke soothingly to her.

A spasm seized Haru. She tore herself from the aide's grasp and, falling prone, beat her small fists on the floor. "They will none of them listen! They will none of them listen!" she screamed, in Japanese. "They call it the fever, and they will not hear! And to-morrow it will be too late!" A peal of hysteric laughter shook her, mixed with strangling sobs. "Are all the gods with Bersonin-San?"

At that name the Admiral's face changed swiftly. "Leave her with me," he said, "and wait in the anteroom."

"But, Excellency—"

The other lifted his hand, and the aide withdrew with the secretary. His two callers had risen, but he stayed them. "We have gone far along the road of confidence to-night," he said in a low tone. "If you are willing, we will go to the end."

He bent and drew the girl to a sitting posture.

"Tell us," he said gently, "what brought you here."