“He will see and report everything, for that is what he is meant to do, but he will spoil nothing. The whole thing is a blind, intended just to keep the spies busy, and the rank and file of the Children of Zion quiet, for fear of their doing something rash. The real plot is a very different matter. You may as well know the main idea. The United Nation Syndicate has been reconstituted, but its object is to be attained in a new way. So long as Scythia holds Jerusalem, the Jewish ideal is necessarily incapable of realisation. She cannot be dispossessed by force; can diplomacy do anything? Besides the Jews there is another very powerful body whose interest it is to get her out, and both these communities have fixed upon a certain person as able to do it if any one can. No; I am not the happy man. My part is merely to cover up his tracks.” “But the risk!” cried Usk. “Why should you run into danger for the sake of this other man?” “To do old friends a good turn, I suppose. Or perhaps, now that I can’t play the game myself, it’s the next best thing to see other people doing it well. Have you guessed who the man is? It’s Malasorte, the Neustrian Pretender. He is to be assisted to make himself emperor at last.” “But I don’t see----How will that----?” Usk was unwontedly perturbed. “The Jesuits will arrange things for him at home, the Jews abroad. Moral support and ready cash, the two indispensables again. In return for their help, he has promised the Jews to turn Scythia out of Palestine.” “And what has he promised the Jesuits?” “Ah, that I don’t know, and there, it seems to me, is the weak point. What if the Jesuits also want Jerusalem? If so, he may hand it over to the Jews first, and then kick them out of it for the benefit of the other lot. ‘_Mala sorte, buona fede_’ is the family motto, you know, but no one ever thinks of quoting it except as ‘_Buona sorte, mala fede_.’” “But why do the Jews and the Jesuits both think so much of him?” “He is a very unusual man, no one can doubt it. His enemies are fond of asserting that he is not a genuine Malasorte, but his likeness to Timoleon I. is enough to disprove that calumny. His father was in the Scythian service, and married a Greek lady, descended, of course, from the Byzantine Emperors. That gives him a great pull with the Orthodox, and he is a personal friend of the Emperor of Scythia, who is very much under his influence. He believes he can induce him to withdraw his troops from Palestine, and Goldberg and the rest believe it too. So he is to have his chance.” “It’s awfully queer how things are mixed up,” said Usk. “Do you know this chap wanted to marry Félicia?” “This same man--Timoleon Lucanor? Yes, I remember, he was military attaché at Washington. And why didn’t he?” “Her father didn’t think his chances good enough, I fancy.”