"_I have left. Tell Eckardt not to trouble. Come alone, and meet me to-morrow night at the Palast Hotel, in Hamburg. I shall call at seven o'clock and ask for Herr Richter. I shall also use that name. Tell nobody of my journey, not even the Crown-Princess. Explain that I have gone to Berlin._--WILHELM, KRONPRINZ." I read the note through a second time, and then burned it. Next day I arrived at the Palast Hotel, facing the Binnenalster, in Hamburg, giving my name as Herr Richter. At seven o'clock I awaited His Highness. Eight o'clock came--nine--ten--even eleven--midnight, but, though I sat in the private room I had engaged, no visitor arrived. Just after twelve, however, a waiter brought up a note addressed to Herr Richter. Believing it to be meant for me, I opened it. To my great surprise, I found that it was from the mysterious Miss King, and evidently intended for the Crown-Prince. It said: "_My brother was released from the Altona Prison this evening--I presume, owing to your intervention--and we are now both safely on our way across to Harwich. You have evidently discovered at last that I am not the helpless girl you believed me to be. When your German police arrested my brother Walter in Bremen as a spy of Britain I think you will admit that they acted very injudiciously, in face of all that my brother and myself know to-day. At Plymouth you demanded, as the price of Walter's liberty, that I should become attached to your secret service in America and betray the man who adopted me and brought me up as his own daughter. But you never dreamed the extent of my knowledge of your country's vile intrigues; you did not know that, through my brother and the man who adopted me as his daughter, I know the full extent of your subtle propaganda. You were, I admit, extremely clever, Herr Richter, and I confess that I was quite charmed when you sent me, as souvenir, that golden butterfly to the hotel in Frankenhausen--that pretty ornament which I returned to you as a mark of my refusal and defiance of the conditions you imposed upon me for the release of my brother from the sentence of fifteen years in a fortress. This time, Herr Richter, a woman wins! Further, I warn you that if you attempt any reprisal my brother will at once expose Germany's machinations abroad. He has, I assure you, many good friends, both in Britain and America. Therefore if you desire silence you will make no effort to trace me further. At Frankenhausen you called me 'the golden-haired butterfly,' but you regarded me merely as a moth! Adieu!_" Twelve hours later I handed that letter to the Crown-Prince in Potsdam. Where he had been in the meantime I did not know. He read it through; then, with a fierce curse upon his thin, curled lips, he crushed it in his hand and tossed it into the fire. SECRET NUMBER EIGHT