But misfortune was not yet done with him. As he started to creep down the stairway a step creaked and the boarding-house keeper came into the hall. “The devil!” he ejaculated and barred the foot of the stairs with his powerful body. “Ivan! Nicolai!” he shouted. For an instant Drexel regretted the pistol he had given Ivan, but there was no time to return for it. He plunged down at his big antagonist; the man set his body and opened his arms to grapple with the escaping prisoner. But Drexel was not minded to get into that detaining clutch. He sent his fist into the other’s chest; the boarding-house keeper, true Russian that he was, knew nothing of the art of boxing, and in the instant that he gasped and floundered Drexel drove a blow into his unguarded solar plexis. He went down in a heap, and Drexel sprang by him and out into the court. Ahead of him lay danger from arrest by the police. But he knew that if once he could get back to the Hotel Europe he would be safe, for no police official would dream of identifying the hunted American with the cousin-to-be of Prince Berloff. Though but little after three, night had already fallen. The darkness was an aid, and with the shawl collar of his shuba turned up so that only nose and eyes were visible, he slipped across and out of the court, and hailed the first swift-looking sleigh he met. He offered the driver double fare, the driver laid on his whip, and half an hour later he walked nonchalantly into the official-filled Hotel Europe. He found his uncle had arrived from America only that morning. The old man was overjoyed to see him, and Drexel would have felt a pleasure no less than his uncle’s had it not been for the pain of his love. John Howard was a sturdy, upstanding old man of close upon seventy, with a shaggy-browed, clean-shaven face, and shrewd gray eyes that could twinkle humorously or glint like steel; a man feared and admired by his friends, feared and hated by his enemies. He had made his great fortune as America’s great fortunes have been made, by his superior might, by thinking solely of his own gain, and thinking little or none about such matters as law, or ethics, or the other fellow, or the public; and he believed his methods just and proper. There was no surface suavity about him, no hypocritical pretense; he was bluff and outspoken--he was just what he was.