Then his speech changed to German, and he went on: "You, sir, are M. Nicol Hendry, and your friend is the Herr von Hamner, Chief of the Berlin Section. What can I do to serve you?" It was anything but the greeting that they expected. They thought that they had tracked the real criminal to his last hiding-place. They had established the identity between Phadrig, the poor seller of curios, and Phadrig Amena, the worker of miracles, whom all the smart set in London was talking about; and here he was in this miserable, shabby room, dressed in clothes that no pawnbroker would advance a couple of shillings on, smiling and bowing before them as though they were lords of the earth, and he--the man who had sent three men and a woman to their deaths by, as it were, a mere word of command--a worm beneath their feet. Nicol Hendry managed to keep his self-possession, but Von Hamner was already sorry that he had come, and his face showed it. "We have come to ask you, Mr Amena," said Hendry, thinking it best to come to the point at once, "why you found it necessary to kill those people. I needn't mention names. You know them as well as we do." "I did not kill them, gentlemen. They killed themselves, according to the newspaper reports. And now, may I ask you why you found it necessary to set these spies of yours to watch my every movement night and day? What have I done to bring myself within the four corners of your English law?" "Nothing, unfortunately, that we can get a warrant for," replied Hendry, trying not to look into his eyes, "and so we have taken the law into our own hands. Come, Mr Amena, the game is up. We know all about your share in the conspiracy to remove Prince Zastrow in order to make room for your patron Prince Oscarovitch. We have copies of his manifesto at Scotland Yard, and we know that you received a telegram in cypher from him to-day." "Ah!" said Phadrig, in a tone whose smoothness was intensely aggravating, "that is very interesting. May I ask if you have translated the cypher?" "No, damn you and your Prince!" burst in Von Hamner. "If we had done that we should know even more about you than we do now--and that ought to be enough to hang you." He had spluttered the words out before Hendry had time to stop him. He expected a tragedy there and then, but it did not happen. Phadrig took the telegram out of his coat pocket, handed it to Von Hamner with a graceful bow, and said: "Your information is quite correct, gentlemen. That is the telegram, and this is the meaning of it." Then as they read the unintelligible jumble of words, he repeated the meaning of them as though they formed the most ordinary message, instead of a dispatch that might, as they well knew, shake Europe to its social and political foundations within the next week or so.