'The Empire performance is not over until half-past eleven,' he explained, 'and it is barely ten o'clock. I had some faint misgivings as to the resetting of the lock. I came back to examine it. That is my answer. You speak now of curiosity. I, too, have curiosity. Will you tell me how you knew that I had opened the safe?' She smiled and lifted her handkerchief for a moment to her lips. Niko's head was bent as though in humiliation. 'It is so hard to outgrow one's errors,' he sighed. He looked towards Lavendale and Lavendale pointed impatiently towards the door. He took a step or two in that direction, then he paused. 'Sir,' he said, looking back, 'because your methods are not mine, believe me that I still can appreciate their mistaken chivalry. The information I have gained I shall use. No promise of mine to the contrary would avail you. But there is, perhaps, some return which I might offer, more valuable, perhaps, to mademoiselle, yet of some import to you also.' Suzanne leaned a little forward. Her cigarette burnt idly between her fingers. 'In this great conflict,' Niko continued, 'whose reverberations shake the earth, Japan watches from afar off. There are few who know the reason, but there is a reason. Let that pass. My country lays no seal upon my lips. What I know I pass on to you. A hundred million cartridges and five thousand tons of heavier ammunition, which might otherwise have reached Russia, are lying now at the bottom of the ocean. This is the doing of one man, a man in the pay of Germany, a man who is the greatest traitor the world has ever known.' 'Ossendorf!' Suzanne cried. Niko bowed and moved towards the door. 'Mademoiselle has suspected, perhaps,' he concluded. 'It is I who can assure her that her suspicions are just. The greatest plant in America is kept producing munitions by day and night, bought with Russian gold but never meant to reach their destination. It is well?' He looked at Lavendale, his hand upon the door. Lavendale nodded curtly. 'It is well,' he said. * * * * * Mr. Jacob P. Weald smoothed out the document which he had been examining and drew a deep sigh of satisfaction. 'Say, Ed,' he remarked, turning to his secretary, who was smoking a cigar at the other end of the room, 'that's worth a cool million apiece for us, that contract.' 'Hope there's no hitch,' the other replied anxiously. 'What's this young fellow from the Embassy want?' 'Nothing to hurt us,' Weald assured him. 'We're all right with the authorities all round. I'm glad, Ed, we did the square thing. We've had it straight from the British War Office to go right along ahead and give Russia everything we can turn out. Well, Russia's going to have it, and, by gum, there's enough ammunition provided for in that contract to make mincemeat of the whole German Army!'