I stared at the pair. My fussy friend with the big head must therefore be either a prince or a grand duke! Just then I was not a prince--only plain M'sieur Martin. In Roumania princes are as plentiful as blackberries, so I put him down as a Roumanian. As I sat opposite him at dinner that night he was discussing with me the harmful writings of some newly discovered German who was posing as a cheap philosopher, and denouncing them as dangerous to the community. He leaned his elbow upon the narrow table and supported his clean-shaven chin upon his finger, displaying to me most, certainly by accident, the palm of his thin right hand. What I discovered there caused me a good deal of surprise. In its centre was a dark livid mark, as though it had been branded there by a hot iron, the plain and distinct imprint of a cat's-paw! It fascinated me. There was some hidden meaning in that mark, I felt convinced. It was just as though a cat had stepped upon blood with one of its fore-paws and trodden upon his hand. Whether he noticed that I had detected it or not, I cannot say, but he moved his hand quickly, and ever after kept it closed. His name, he told me at last, was Konstantinos Vassos, and he lived in Athens. But I took that information _cum grano_, for I knew him to be a prince travelling _incognito_. The passport-officer at Semlin makes no mistakes. But if actually a prince, why did he carry a passport? There is, unfortunately, no good hotel at Sofia. The best is the Bulgarie, kept by a pleasant old lady to whom I was well-known as M'sieur Martin, and in this we found ourselves next night installed. He gave his name as Vassos, and to all intents and purposes was more of a stranger in Prince Ferdinand's capital than I myself was, for I had been there at least half a dozen times before. Most of the Ministers knew me, and I was always elected a member of the smart diplomats' club, the Union, during my stay. The days passed. From the first morning of my arrival I found myself as before in a vortex of gaiety; invitations to the Legations poured in upon me, cards for dances here and there, receptions by members of the Cabinet, and official dinners by the British and French Ministers, while daily I spent each afternoon with my friend, Colonel Mayhew, the British military _attache_, in his comfortable quarters not far from our Agency. All the while, I must here confess, I was working my cards very carefully. I had sounded my friend, Petkoff, the grave, grey-haired Prime Minister--the splendid Bulgarian patriot--and he was inclined to admit the British proposals. The Minister of War, too, was on my side. German agents had approached him, but he would have none of them. In Bulgaria just then they had no love of Germany. They were far too Russophile.