The affair occurred about a couple of months after the death of the fascinating Olga Steinkoff. He had been sent back to the Balkans upon another mission. Cosmopolitan of cosmopolitans, he had been moving rapidly up and down Europe gathering information for Downing Street, but ever on the look-out for an opening for the Parson and himself to operate in a very different sphere. Garrett, blindly obedient to the telegrams he received, had taken the car on some long flying journeys, Vienna, Berlin and back to Belgrade, in Servia. For two months or so I had lost sight of both the mild-mannered, spectacled Clayton and the Prince, when one morning, while walking down St James's Street, I saw Garrett in his grey and scarlet livery driving the car from Piccadilly down to Pall Mall. By this I guessed that his Highness had returned to London, so I called at Dover Street, and twenty minutes later found myself seated in the big saddle-bag chair with a "Petroff" between my lips. He was in his old brown velvet lounge coat and slippers, and had been at his writing-table when I entered. But on my appearance he threw down his pen, stretched himself, and sat round for a gossip. Suddenly, while speaking, he made a quick, half-foreign gesture of ignorance in response to a question of mine, and in that brief instant I saw upon his right palm a curious red mark. "Hullo!" I asked. "What's that?" "Oh--nothing," he replied, rather confused I thought, and shut his hand so that I could not see it. "But it is!" I declared. "Let me see." "How inquisitive you are, Diprose, old chap," he protested. So persistent was I, and so aroused my curiosity by finding a mark exactly like the imprint of a cat's-paw, that, not without considerable reluctance, he explained its meaning. The story he narrated was, indeed, a most remarkable and dramatic one. And yet he related it as though it were nothing. Perhaps, indeed, the puzzling incidents were of but little moment to one who led a life so chock-full of adventure as he. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yes, it really was curious, he remarked at last. It was in March. I had been in London's mud and rain for a fortnight, and grown tired of it. Suddenly a confidential mission had been placed in my hands--a mission which had for its object British support to the Bulgarian Government against the machinations of Austria to extend her sphere of influence southward across the Danube and Servia. My destination was Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, and once more the journey by the Orient Express across Europe was a long and tedious one. I had wired to Garrett, who was awaiting me with the car at the Hungaria, in Budapest, to bring it on to Sofia.