So the reporter had found her, and she was safe and sound on her way to New York? Knowing by this time something of the reporter's courage, he was eager to learn how the event had come about. When he had not had a telephone message from Norton in forty-eight hours, he had decided that the Black Hundred had finally succeeded in getting hold of him. It had been something of a blow; for while he looked with disfavor upon the reporter's frank regard for his charge, he appreciated the fact that Norton was a staff to lean on, and had behind him all the power of the press, which included the privilege of going everywhere even if one could not always get back. As he folded the telegram and put it into his pocket, he observed the man with the opera glasses over the way. He shrugged. Well, let him watch till his eyes dropped out of his head; he would only see that which was intended for his eyes. Still, it was irksome to feel that no matter when or where you moved, watching eyes observed and chronicled these movements. Suddenly, not being devoid of a sense of dry humor, Jones stepped over to the telephone and called up her highness the Countess Perigoff. "Who is it?" He was forced to admit, however reluctantly, that the woman had a marvelously fine speaking voice. "It is Jones, madam." "Jones?" "Mr. Hargreave's butler, madam." "Oh! You have news of Florence?" "Yes." It will be an embarrassing day for humanity when some one invents a photographic apparatus by which two persons at the two ends of the telephone may observe the facial expressions of each other. "What is it? Tell me quickly." "Florence has been found, and she is on her way back to New York. She was found by Mr. Norton, the reporter." "I am so glad! Shall I come up at once and have you tell me the whole amazing story?" "It would be useless, madam, for I know nothing except what I learned from a telegram I have just received. But no doubt some time this evening you might risk a call." "Ring up the instant she returns. Did she say what train?" "No, madam," lied Jones, smiling. He hung up the receiver and stared at the telephone as if he would force his gaze in and through it to the woman at the other end. Flesh and blood! Well, greed was stronger than that. Treacherous cat! Let her play; let her weave her nets, dig her pits. The day would come, and it was not far distant, when she would find that the mild-eyed mongoose was just as deadly as the cobra, and far more cunning. The heads of the Black Hundred must be destroyed. Those were the orders. What good to denounce them, to send them to a prison from which, with the aid of money and a tremendous secret political pull, they might readily find their way out? They must be exterminated, as one kills off the poisonous plague rats of the Orient. A woman? In the law of reprisal there was no sex.