Themar

The hall door creaked. Simultaneously Themar and Philip wheeled. The Baron stood in the doorway.

Philip smiled and bowed.

"Excellency," said he, "Themar in an over-zealous desire to rearrange your private papers has acquired your private key and I have taken the liberty of confiscating it, knowing that you prize its possession. Permit me to return it now."

"Thank you, Poynter!" said the Baron and glanced keenly at Themar. "It is but now that I had missed it."

"Excellency," burst forth Themar desperately, "I found it this morning on the rug."

"But," purred the Baron, "why seek a keyhole?"

Themar's dark face was ashen.

Philip, with a wholesome distaste for scenes, slipped away.

"Excellency," burst forth Themar passionately as the door closed, "it is unfair--"

The Baron raised his hand in a gesture of warning.

"Permit me, Themar," he said coldly as the sound of Philip's footsteps died away, "permit me to remind you that my secretary is quite unaware of our peculiar relations. He is laboring at present under the necessary delusion that your arrival here was entirely the result of my fastidious distaste for the personal services of anyone but a fellow countryman. Presumably I had cabled home for you. I prefer," he added, "that he continue to think so."

Themar's eyes flashed resentfully.

"Excellency," he said sullenly, "it is unfair that I am denied the knowledge of detail that I need. That is why I sought to read the cipher."