“She is all brain, our Kate,” he said admiringly, “but her heart--pouf!” he puffed out a cloud of smoke to emphasize the word. “There is no end to her energy,” he went on; “sometimes I think she is dangerous and then when I come to consider all things it is impossible to say that she can be. After all, hers is only the plan. The responsibility for the bungling is with us--the plan is so perfect that you can hardly pick a hole in it. She works out to the last minute detail the chronology of a coup, she dresses it, rehearses it. She never fails. Yes, it was Rahboulla,” he agreed, “and I was wrong to kick. What was it she called me, a ‘centre forward’ and a ‘dago’,” he laughed softly. “She is very young,” said the Colonel apologetically, “and a little impetuous of speech--she talks too much, I think.” “A pretty woman can never talk too much,” said the gallant Gregori; “she can think too much and talk too little. A person who talks is like a lighted house with all the blinds up and the doors open, you know where you are. Now, Colonel _mio_, how far have we got with this new scheme?” The Colonel brought a chair in one hand and a light table in the other to where the Spaniard sat, produced from his inside-pocket a bunch of memoranda and in a few minutes the men were deep in the discussion of the most remarkable, the most startling and the most daring enterprise that Crime Street had ever undertaken. CHAPTER V. A CHORUS GIRL AT SEBO’S Sebo’s Club was crowded, for it was the dinner hour and Sebo’s is the most extensively patronized of the dining clubs. Here, all that was beautiful, all that was smart, all that was famous and brilliant in the world of society, letters and the drama met on common ground--the inherent and universal desire which humanity has for careless comfort. A Cabinet Minister and his party sat at the next table to that presided over by a great revue actress; the owner of a Derby winner sat back to back against a famous Radical satirist. The editor of a great London daily could look across his table and without shifting his eyes could count in his field of vision the pretty dancer from the Empiredrome, a royal physician, a peer of the realm and a ragtime singer. The big dining hall blazed with lights, the little tables were crowded together so as to leave scarcely room for the waiters who, by some mysterious dispensation of Providence, seemed able to thread their ways through impossible spaces. The noisy coon band kept up its rhythmic pandemonium in one corner of the room, but did not drown the rippling laughter and the buzz of light-hearted talk. In the little vestibule a young man, very tall and very thin, paced the tesselated floor with that evidence of resignation which tells so eloquently the story of the Unpunctual Guest. He was very fair and very pink. His countenance was vacant and the vacancy was by no means relieved when he screwed a gold-rimmed monocle into his right eye.