“Remember now,” my tutor said icily, “every man in our profession is a man who not only knows very much, but may know too much, unless he can be trusted to keep what he knows to himself. There are three ways in which he can fail to do that—by carelessness, by accident, and by deliberate talking. Never talk—never be careless—never have accidents happen to you. Then you will be safe, and in no other way can you be so safe. Keep that in your mind. You will find it much more profitable and useful than remembering what anybody has to say about Franz von Heiden. It was a commonplace quarrel with Captain von Frentzen which killed him. A court of honor has said so.” That night at Gross Lichterfelde, after lights were out, Willi von Heiden came creeping to my bed. I was the only intimate friend he had there and he felt the need of talking with some one about the big brother who had been his hero. Need I go into details of how his artless confidence made me feel? But human beings are exceedingly selfish and self-centered creatures. I had a heart-felt sorrow for my chum and his family in their tragic bereavement. And, blaming myself as I did for it, I was abased completely. Yet there was another feeling in me at least as deeply rooted as those two emotions. It was dread. Dread was to follow me for many years. I had learned the dangers of the dark secret world in which I lived. Its rules of conduct and its ruthless code had been revealed to me, not merely by precept but by example. And with that realization all the thrill of romance and adventure disappeared. For I knew that I, too, might at any time be counted among the men who “knew too much.” CHAPTER IV. _I am sent to Geneva and learn of a plot. How there are more ways of getting rid of a King than by blowing him up with dynamite._ If at any time in this story of my life, I have given the impression that accident did not play a very important part in the work of myself and other secret agents, I have done so unintentionally. “If” has been a big word in the history of the world; and even in my small share of the events of the last ten years, chance has oftentimes been a more able ally than some of the best laid of my plans. If, for instance, I had not happened to be in Geneva in the winter of 1909-10; or if a certain official of the Russian secret police—the _Okrana_—had not met a well-deserved death at the hands of a committee of “Reds”; or if the German Foreign Office had not been playing a pretty little game of diplomacy in the Southwestern corner of Europe—why, the world to-day would be poorer by a King, and possibly richer by another combatant in the Great War.