"My ammunition was no good!... But I am at a loss to understand what they are trying to do with ME.... Certainly I don't look like a very important personage in my present state.... Yet my captors are not treating me very badly ... aside from being locked up in this deserted villa with its broken chairs and vacant picture frames and general air of hasty abandonment there's nothing to disturb the tranquillity of my reflections except the recurring tramp of the muffled sentry below my broken window ... this building has a sort of Byzantine cut in its architectural design.... On the other side of the valley there's a minaret or two visible through the smoky haze.... Off to the left I can make out quite distinctly the outlines of a Greek Cross.... The road leading toward that Cross looks like the work of a Muscovite engineer,--which speaks well for it.... It's built of the same material as the one over the mountains from Tiflis to Vladicaucaz and Kislovodsk.... I MUST BE ON RUSSIAN SOIL!... But what is _mystifying_ to me is, _how did that veiled girl_ of the Métropole manage to know the SENTRY who is guarding my person so methodically down below?... She has been here twice, now, and talks to him very confidentially.... QUATSCH! if she thinks to find _any_ jewelry clinging to my person she'll have to fry me to get it out." 14. Then this entry: "The veiled Métropole Nemesis was to see the sentry today.... She seemed to be quite happy about something and looked up in the direction of my window a number of times.... She was eating some of those champagne-colored rose leaves that are crystallized by the firm of Demitrof at Moscow and sold as confections to the ladies of the Court!... What does it mean?... Furthermore, if that _sentry_ is not the same man who acted as valet to Prince Galitzyn at Monte Carlo when Delcassé, Grey and Galitzyn (otherwise "Count Techlow") were gliding about the Grand Hôtel de Londres! "The mystery is solved....