‘It comes to this,’ he cried pathetically, ‘that unless I betray him you will report to him that I am a traitor!’ ‘You should have thought of that before you accepted the money of the Duke of Heligoland,’ I retorted, naming the Royal exile referred to above. The German sighed, and hung his head. ‘The Russian Government is not less wealthy than the Order of Assumptionists,’ I added. Finkelstein brightened up again. A man of such mercurial temperament was most unfit for his position. As soon as it became a question of terms between us I knew that the battle was won. The German really hated and feared Russia, like all his countrymen, and had it been prudent to do so, I should have been glad to relieve his mind. It was an easy matter for him to make the required arrangements. A hint to the commander of the regiment which supplied the Palace guard that some theft had taken place, and that a detective’s presence was necessary, was sufficient. At the hour of eleven, the Kaiser’s time for retiring, I found myself in the uniform of a Prussian soldier, pacing the corridor which gave access to his Majesty’s cabinet. Secured from suspicion by the character in which I had entered the Palace, I lost no time in unlocking the door of the room by means of a key invented by myself. I must be excused from describing its mechanism in these pages; but the only lock against which it is powerless is the familiar letter padlock. As soon as I was inside I closed the door again. I did not venture to turn on the electric light, but made use of a dark lantern I had brought with me, to explore the chamber. In front of me stood his Majesty’s writing-table, covered with despatch boxes. I considered it useless to open them, and turned my eyes round the room in search of some more secret receptacle. At first no sign of anything of the kind I sought was visible. There were cupboards, but they were not even locked. The walls were hung with maps, among which my eye was particularly caught by a chart of the world on Mercator’s projection, on which the various possessions of Great Britain were indicated by small red flags attached to pins. It seemed to me an ominous thing that such a map, so marked, should be ever before the eyes of the ablest Continental ruler, who was known to be feverishly at work building a navy fit to contend with that of England. In a reflective mood I stepped towards the map and looked at it. The flag which marked New Zealand had sagged down slightly, as though less firmly thrust in than the rest. Without stopping to think what I was doing, I took hold of the pin and pressed it into the wall. To my surprise I felt a resistance which at once accounted for the loose position in which I had found the flag. I removed one of the other pins, and found it went into the wall without any difficulty. It was therefore clear that at the particular part of the wall covered by New Zealand there existed some obstacle, probably of a metallic nature.