"Le Bravache!" gasped Garrett, for his reputation was that of the most daring and successful adventurer on the Continent, besides which he knew him as his Highness's arch-enemy owing to a little love affair of a couple of years before. "Yes. `Le Bravache'!" the Prince went on. "He recognised me, and I saw that our game was up. Then you told me Elfrida's story, and from the red circle on the man's arm I realised that Paul Berton, the engineer, and `Le Bravache' were one and the same person! Besides, she had actually given you to take to her husband the very thing we had gone to Glenblair to obtain!" "What was it?" he asked excitedly. "Well, the facts are these," answered the audacious, good-looking Prince, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. "Old Blair-Stewart has taken, in secret, a contract from the German Government to build a number of submarine boats for naval use. The plans of these wonderful vessels are kept in a strong safe in the old chap's private office in Dumbarton, and both Fourrier and ourselves were after them--the French Intelligence Department having, in confidence, offered a big sum to any one bringing them to the Quay d'Orsay. Now you see the drift of the story of the exemplary Paul to his pretty little wife, and why he induced her to take impressions in wax of her father's safe-key, she believing that he merely wanted sight of the plans in order to ascertain whether they were any better than his own alleged invention. Fortunately for us, she induced you to be her messenger. When we sent you up there with orders to be nice to Elfrida we never anticipated such a _contretemps_ as Fourrier's presence, or that the dainty little girl would actually take the impressions for us to use." "Then you have used it?" "Of course. On the night after leaving you, having made the false key in Glasgow, we went over to Dumbarton and got the plans quite easily. We crossed by Harwich and Antwerp to Brussels on to Paris, and here we are again. The Intelligence Department of the Admiralty are very satisfied--and so are we. The pretty Elfrida will no doubt remain in ignorance, until her father discovers his loss, but I'm half inclined to write anonymously to her and tell the poor girl the truth regarding her mysterious husband. I think I really shall, for my letter would cast a good deal of suspicion upon the Man with the Red Circle." CHAPTER FIVE. THE WICKED MR WILKINSON. How my cosmopolitan friend, the Prince, was tricked by a woman, and how he was, entirely against his inclination, forced to run the gauntlet of the police at Bow Street at imminent risk of identification as Tremlett, form an interesting narrative which is perhaps best told in his own words, as he recounted it to me the other day in the noisy Continental city where he is at this moment in hiding.