'Baron Niko Komashi,' Kessner repeated. 'Who is he?' Lavendale laughed easily. He was already bitterly regretting his momentary lapse. 'Heaven knows!' he exclaimed. 'The odds dazzled me.' They walked out to the car almost in silence. A new spirit seemed to have come to Kessner. He looked and talked differently throughout the rest of the evening's entertainment. He seemed somehow to have lost his air of half bantering confidence. When the time came for farewells, he looked long and earnestly into Lavendale's face. 'We must know one another better, young man,' was all he said.... On their way back to her rooms, Suzanne gripped Lavendale by the arm and asked him a question. 'What does it all mean?' she demanded. 'Why did you guess Niko? Why were they both so thunderstruck?' 'Because,' he replied, 'Niko happened to be the writer of that little epistle.' Her large eyes gleamed at him through the semi-darkness, filled with wonder. 'But how could you possibly know that?' He smiled. 'It is your responsibility,' he explained. 'I noticed the perfume directly he drew the note from the envelope.' She laughed softly--softly at first and then heartily. 'Why, it is most amusing!' she exclaimed. 'He thinks you a necromancer. He is, I believe, a little afraid of you. And that other man, all through the performance he scarcely took his eyes off you.' 'At any rate,' Lavendale observed, 'it has given me something to think about.' II Lavendale found his way to the American Embassy early on the following morning, and interviewed his friend Mr. Washburn. 'Anything from Washington?' he inquired. 'I have only had a formal acknowledgment,' Mr. Washburn replied, 'except that they added a code word they don't often make use of, and which I take to indicate a pat on the back for you.' 'Is it true,' Lavendale continued, dragging a chair up to the side of Mr. Washburn's desk, 'that Berlin has given Washington to understand that unless she changes her attitude toward the Allies and withdraws her objection to submarine warfare, she will no longer respect the Monroe Doctrine?' '_Pourparlers_ to that effect,' Mr. Washburn confessed, 'have passed. How did you come to hear of them?' Lavendale smiled a little grimly, yet with some self-satisfaction. 'I am getting on the track of something else which promises to be even more interesting,' he went on. 'Tell me, how do we stand with Japan just now?' Mr. Washburn knitted his brows. 'Still friction--always friction,' he admitted. 'The whole thing is too ridiculous. Personally, I consider our Western States are very much to blame. We have never before raised the cry 'America for the Americans only,' and it's too late to do it now. And the fact of it is you see, the Western States simply decline to fall in with Washington Policy. Then the trouble comes. Any particular reason for asking?'