"She is no longer," Lutchester replied. "She sailed for France this morning without seeing him. She has remembered that she is a Frenchwoman." "It was you who reminded her!" "Love so easily makes people forgetful," he said, "and I think that Sonia was very fond of Maurice Ziduski. She is a thoughtless, passionate woman, easily swayed through her affections, and she had no idea of the evil she was doing." "So that disposes of Sonia," Pamela reflected. "Sonia was only an interlude," Lutchester declared. "She really doesn't come into this affair at all. The one person who does come into it, whom you and I must speak of, is Fischer." "A most interesting man," Pamela sighed. "I really think his wife would have a most exciting life." "She would!" Lutchester agreed. "She'd probably be allowed to visit him once every fourteen days in care of a warder." "Spite!" Pamela exclaimed, with a suspicious little quiver at the corner of her lips. Lutchester shook his head. "Fischer is too near the end of his rope for me to feel spiteful," he said, "though I am quite prepared to grant that he may be capable of considerable mischief yet. A man who has the sublime effrontery to attempt to come to an agreement with two countries, each behind the other's back, is a little more than Machiavellian, isn't he?" "Is that true of Mr. Fischer?" "Absolutely," Lutchester assured her. "He is over here for the purpose of somehow or other making it known informally in Washington that Germany would be willing to pledge herself to an alliance with America against Japan, after the war, if America will alter her views as to the export of munitions to the Allies." "Well, that's a reasonable proposition, isn't it, from his point of view?" Pamela remarked. "It may not be a very agreeable one from yours, but it is certainly one which he has a right to make." "Entirely," Lutchester agreed, "but where he goes wrong is that his primary object in coming here was to meet Hie chief of the Japanese Secret Service, to whom he has made a proposition of precisely similar character." Pamela set down her glass. "You are not in earnest!" "Absolutely." "Nikasti?" "Precisely! He came all the way from Japan to confer with Fischer. Probably, if we knew the whole truth, those rooms at the Plaza Hotel, and the social partnership of your brother and Fischer, were arranged for no other reason than to provide a safe personality for Nikasti in this country, and a safe place for him to talk things over with Fischer." "Mr. Fischer was paying nearly the whole of the expenses of the Plaza suite," Pamela observed thoughtfully.