"YOU MEAN," MR. THURLOW asked, that I am not free to leave?"

M. Samuel was ceremoniously polite. "But not at all! It is not required. It will be a favour to us. It is so I ask, and that you will take it no other way."

"I take it," the ambassador replied, "in the only way that I can. And I will tell you this. It is a request which I would refuse, if I were of a disposition to go. I would challenge you to prevent me, if your Government were of no better discretion than that. I can tell you that I have discussed the matter with Mr. Rolls" (Rolls was the U.S.A. Ambassador accredited to the French Republic), "and he is of the same mind. It is not suspicion, it is apology which is due to me. It was an intrusion upon the amenities of my visit here, such as the English police would not allow to occur - let alone providing an exhibit from their own ranks, such as you were regrettably unable to prevent. . . . But I will tell you this. I intend that this affair shall be cleared up, and I will put the best detectives from my own country upon it, at whatever cost to myself, if that is more than you are able to do. For the present, I shall remain here, unless my official duties shall require my return, in which event I shall go at once, relying upon the passport I hold, and with no reference to you."

M. Samuel rose stiffly. "If you are staying, it is all that I have asked. . . . And you may have opportunity to see that our police are no less efficient than those of your own land."

Mr. Thurlow said no more. He was an angry man. He had read what the continental edition of the New York Herald had to say on the event, and he did not like it, for, though it might have been worse, there had been an absence of the reticence which the French police had required of their own Press; and he had already had some cabled summaries of what was being published in his own country, which he liked less. He did not forget that the party to whom he owed his appointment was no longer in the ascendency either in Congress or at the White House. Was his career to be wrecked by this incident, for which he had no responsibility at all and which it would have been impossible to foresee? It was a maddening possibility. And that young fool on the floor below - if he could be induced to speak!

"Irene," he exclaimed abruptly, "can't you make him see sense?"

Irene understood readily, and her hesitation did not arise from any lack of appreciation of her father's position. She said, "You think it's that serious? . . . I don't mind trying."

"I wish you would. . . . If he'll only be frank with us, you can tell him it shan't go further without his consent."

"Well, I'll try."

"And I'll have a cable put through to Washington. I'd like to give Hammond a tip how to deal with this."

The announcement of this decision gave Irene an increased realization of the gravity with which her father regarded the incident, and increased her determination to persuade her cousin to a franker attitude.

But her efforts to find him were not immediately successful. He was not in his room, and when he was located it was in the dining-room, where she was indisposed to intrude upon him.

Before she could telephone him in the privacy of his own room, her father had been on the Washington line, and though it was a conversation she did not hear, she could judge something of with whom, and what its purport had been, when he said to her:

"We're going back to London at once - by the night boat. I don't know what I'm suffering from, unless its senile decay, but I ought to have said that at once, when M. Samuel had the damned insolence to hint that I'd better stay."

"Then I'd better begin packing now. Shall we go by air?"

"No But we'll take the next boat, and I'll let Samuel know what I intend. That'll give him a few hours to think things over before he decides whether to do anything that'll put him in the ranks of the unemployed - and perhaps me as well, which would matter more."

"Yes, I see." So, being an intelligent girl, she more or less did. Washington did not wish to have an ambassador to England who was detained by the French police; or, at least, it wished to know with certainty whether that was the position with which it would have to deal. Her father had been told to call for the cards to be turned up, so that they would know where they were.

Well, there might be all the more reason for plain talking to William now!

So she went to the 'phone again, and heard Kindell say, but with a reserve in his voice which, faint though it was, she did not fail to detect and resent:

"Yes, of course. Glad to. Shall I come up now?"

"No. I'll come down to you."

There was a moment's pause before he answered, "Very well, if you'd rather," the hesitation being more evident than before. It gave Irene a momentary fear that he had considered that there was some breach of propriety in her proposal to visit him in his own room. Could there be? Between cousins? In the afternoon? By English standards, if not by hers? She put the foolish idea aside. Let him think what he would - he would quickly learn that there was no levity in her mind.

But when she reached his room she could not tell herself that there was any lack of cordiality in his reception, and if it failed something in the spontaneity of his usual manner - well, perhaps it was natural! Particularly if he had guessed the purpose for which she came.

"Anything fresh?" he asked, as he drew forward his most comfortable chair.

"Yes, I should say there is! That beast Samuel has had what Father calls the damned insolence to hint that we'd better stay where we are, and Washington's told us to start back to London at once, and see whether they've got the nerve to stop us."

"I don't think they'll do that."

"I wish for Father's sake that I were equally sure. I don't mean that I'm afraid of any serious trouble for him over the murder. That's ridiculous. But it's the fact of one in his official position getting mixed up in such an affair."

"I don't see that. If he had no part in it - about which I'm as sure as you - it would be absurd to blame him for something he couldn't reasonably have been expected to foresee or prevent."

"Of course it would. But politics aren't reasonable. And it's different with us from what it is in England. Our diplomatic appointments are matters of party politics, and are liable to be attacked in ways that you wouldn't know. If a Republican gets mixed up in an unpleasant affair, the Democrats think it's only playing the game to make it look as bad as they can. And if they can make it ugly enough for the Republican bosses to think that they'd get on better without the man the talk's about, it doesn't matter who he is, or whether he's right or wrong. They'll throw him overboard.

"In your country, I've heard that a scandal's sometimes hushed up by the Press, to save a good man from getting sacked. But that wouldn't be possible in America. If we go wrong, it's the opposite way. . . . And that," she concluded, with an earnest pleading in her voice which was not pleasant for Kindell to hear, "is why we feel we're in rather a jam, and why I'm going to ask you to be franker with us than you've been yet."

"You think I know something about it I haven't said?"

"I'm sure you do."

"And you think it would help your father if I said it?"

"Yes. It's common sense. Anything that gets nearer what did happen must be helpful to him."

Kindell rose, and paced the room restlessly. He had found himself incapable of the ready unconvincing lie which M. Samuel might have said that the position clearly required, and he saw that his delay in replying was an admission of knowing more than he was willing to say.

"You know, Irene," he began at length, "I don't want to keep anything back from you - - "

"Then we both feel the same. I'll promise we won't let it go further without your consent."

It appeared certain to Kindell that the French police would not venture - probably would not even wish - to detain the ambassador, when they knew that he intended to defy their request for him to remain in Paris. Is it wrong to make a conditional promise which you would not keep, if you are certain that the condition will not arise? It is a point of casuistry to which he had no time to give the full consideration which its subtlety surely requires. He scrambled on to the precarious raft it offered, when he said: "I can't say more than this. If your father should be detained by the police here - I don't think he will be - I'll tell you everything that I know or guess about the whole affair."

"I don't think I'm going to say thank you for that. It would be offering help when it would be too late to be any good."

"I suppose you see that I'm under suspicion as well as Mr. Thurlow? And most people would say that I'm in more danger. The police here haven't any reason to be afraid of arresting me."

"That's just an extra reason why you shouldn't keep anything back from us. We're not keeping anything from you. Can't you treat us as friends? Or are the Blinkwells the only people you feel able to trust?"

Irene had a moment of immediate regret at this last question which was impulsively put. But next minute she was less sure that she had been wrong, as he replied, "I never said that I trusted them," and she had a sound instinct that the suggestion had caused embarrassment rather than indignation or surprise.

"No," she said, rising in a resentment which she felt to be the last card that she had to play, "you know best about that. But it's evident that you don't trust us. I'd always hoped that when I came to Europe I should meet relatives it would be a pleasure to know. But we all make mistakes sometimes."

She had certainly made him look unhappy now. But his only reply was: "I'm very sorry you feel like that. . . . How do you propose to get back to England?"

"We're going on the night boat. Almost at once."

"I think I'll do the same, or at............