"`I know sufficient to be permitted to call myself your friend,' I said earnestly, still holding her tiny hand. "`Then I will be frank,' she exclaimed, raising her clear eyes again to mine. `The only way in which you can save me is to take me at once to England--to--to let me pass as your wife!' "`As my _wife_!' I gasped, staring at her. `But--' "`There are no buts!' she cried, clinging to me imploringly. `To me it is a matter of life--or death! The Orient Express passes here at three to-morrow morning for Constantza, whence we can get to Constantinople. Thence we can go by steamer on to Naples, and across to Calais by rail. For me it is unsafe to go direct by Budapest and Vienna. Already the police are watching at the frontier.' "For a moment I was silent. In the course of years of travel I had met with many adventures, but none anything like this! Here was a charming girl in dire distress--a girl who had already enchanted me by her beauty and grace--appealing to my honour to help her out of a difficulty. Nay to save her life! "She was Russian--no doubt a political suspect. "`Where is Madame?' I inquired. "`Gone to Belgrade. We parted this morning, and I came here to you.' "`And your friend, Mehmed?' "`Bah! the yellow-faced fool!' she cried impatiently with a quick snap of her white fingers. `He expects to meet me at the Court ball to-night!' "`And he will be disappointed!' I added with a smile, at the same time reflecting that upon my passport already _vised_ for Constantinople-- covered as it was, indeed, with _vises_ for all the East--I could easily insert after my own name the words, `accompanied by his wife Louisa.' "Besides, though I had several times been in the Sultan's capital, I knew very few people there. So detection would not be probable. "Olga saw my hesitation, and repeated her entreaty. She was, I saw, desperate. Yet though I pressed her to tell me the truth, she only answered: "`The police of Warsaw are in search of me because of the events of May last. Some day, when we know each other better, I will tell you my strange story. I escaped from the "Museum of Riga"'!" "Pale to the lips, her chest rising and falling quickly, her blue eyes full of the terror of arrest and deportment to Poland she stood before me, placing her life in my hands. "She had escaped from the `Museum of Riga,' that prison the awful tortures of which had only recently been exposed in the Duma itself. She, frail looking, and beautiful had been a prisoner there. "It wanted, I reflected, still eight days to the opening of the shooting which I was due to spend with friends in Scotland. Even if I returned by the roundabout route she suggested I should be able to get up north in time.