"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square--he is due there now, mignonne--and I am not there to show him the thing--Margot, for the love of God, let me have the paper!" "Let me have the sign, the password!" Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else to do, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come. "'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded, desperately--choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, the password of the Apache. "It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she made reply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyes deriding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Your thoughts are in the Bois, _cher ami_. What is the password of the brotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non! It is not right!" The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash of inspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt he was not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase ever used for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase-- "'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits are in the moon to-night, _la reine_. 'To the day,' of course--'To the day!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessed aright. "Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough--for the absinthe, of which she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her. "A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked! It is well I know thee--it is well it was the word of les Apaches in the beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"--putting her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your hand." The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as Cleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have cheered. "Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughed Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the fastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well be modestly careful, when--Name of the devil! what's that?" It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage without--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed hard. A single whistle--short and sharp, such as this one was--was the signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.