Next day the military and civil population set out to find who could possibly have told the Turkish destroyers that such a place as Odessa existed. Armand, the Belgian dancer, was particularly loud on the subject of spies; Sylvia suspected it was he who had suggested to the police that Madame Eliane, as a reputed Austrian, should be severely examined with a view to finding out if the signals of which all were talking could be traced to her windows. If he did inform the police, his meanness recoiled upon his own head, for the examination of Madame Eliane was succeeded by an examination of all her guests, in the course of which Armand's passport was found to be slightly irregular, and he was nearly expelled to Rumania in consequence. The authorities made up their minds that no Turkish destroyer should ever again discover the whereabouts of their town, and the most stringent ordinances against showing lights were promulgated; but a more important result of the declaration of war by Turkey than the lighting of Odessa was its interference with the future plans of the mountebanks at the Cabaret de l'Aube. There was not one of them who had not intended to proceed from here to Constantinople, a much more profitable winter engagement than this Black Sea port. "_C'est assommant_," Armand declared. "_Zut! On ne peut pas rester ici tout l'hiver. On crevera._" "But at any rate one should be thankful that one was not hit by an _obus_," said Odette. "I nearly died of fright." "It wasn't the fault of the Turks that we weren't hit," Armand grumbled. "They did their best." "Luckily the shells didn't travel so fast as you," Sylvia put in. Flora laughed at this; but when everybody began to tease Armand about his cowardice she got angry, and invited any girl present to produce a man that would have behaved differently.