Marloff was now in the position of having refused my overture towards friendship, without knowing who I was. This left me free to watch him, without rendering any explanations. He was consequently furious with himself. The fact is the man was a mere amateur, as one who drops into a profession from above generally is. De Witte had taken him out of a cavalry regiment, and made a diplomatist of him; but when it came to secret service work he was a child in the hands of a man like myself. I saw the pretended Colonel get up and limp out of the room, no doubt to send a cipher despatch to the Minister, complaining of my arrival. I went to the manager of the hotel, introduced myself as a Russian police agent on the track of a great rouble forgery, and wormed out of him a mass of particulars with regard to Sigersen’s movements. I gathered that he had been in Christiania about a month, having toured through Norway first as far north as Trondhjem. He had made numerous friends in the Norwegian capital, including several prominent members of the Storthing, as they call their parliament. But his chosen intimate appeared to be a judge named ----, who was regarded as a guiding spirit of the party most strongly hostile to the Swedish connection. It was Judge ---- who had prompted the erection of a fortress on the Swedish-Norwegian frontier, guarding the approach to Christiania. The same warlike functionary had decided on the judicial bench that no native of Sweden could exercise the rights of a citizen in Norway until he had taken out letters of naturalisation. In short, this judge had carefully taught his countrymen to treat the Swedes as Englishmen were treated by the Boers in the days of the Transvaal Republic. All this was nothing more than I had been prepared for by King Oscar. The task now before me was to ascertain if possible what was the nature of the understanding between Judge ---- and the agent of the Russian Government. I asked the hotel manager-- ‘How does Colonel Sigersen pay your bill?’ ‘By cheque,’ was the ready answer. ‘By cheque on the Bergen and Christiania Bank.’ ‘Is it usual for foreign visitors to have a banking account open in Christiania?’ I inquired, keeping up the part of a detective. The manager admitted it was not. Evidently, now I had drawn his attention to the point, it struck him as suspicious. I left him, feeling that I had secured an ally in my watch on Marloff, and made my way to the offices of the bank. The director of this institution received me with every courtesy. Bankers are too often victimised for them to regard the police with any feeling but gratitude. The tale I brought was received with open ears. ‘I have reason to think that an account has been opened with you for purposes of fraud. If I am right, the swindlers have endeavoured to gain your confidence at the outset by a large credit. This credit has been opened in the name of Colonel Sigersen, a pretended Finlander.’ The manager was visibly alarmed.