Left alone, Triona poured himself out another whisky and soda. In one evening he had suffered two shocks, for neither of which his easy nature had prepared him. The Wedderburn incident he could explain away. But from the blind alley into which he was pinned by Colonel Onslow, there had been but a horrible wriggling escape. It was a matter, too, more spiritual even than material. He felt as though he had crawled through a sewer. He went to his desk by the window, and from a drawer took out his despatch case, which he unlocked with the key that never left his person; and from it he drew the little black book. There, half-erased, in pencil on the reverse of the cover, was the word, in Russian characters, “Krilov.” Hitherto he had regarded this as some unimportant memorandum of name or place. It had never occurred to him that it was the name of the owner of the diary. But now, it stared at him accusingly as the signature of the dead man whose soul, as it were, he had robbed. Krilov. There was no doubt about it. Onslow had known him, that fine-featured grizzled-haired dead man, in his vehement life. He had heard from his lips the wild adventures which he had set down with such official phlegm in the little black book, and which he, Alexis Triona, had credited to himself, and had invested with the wealth of his poet’s imagination. Of course, he had lied, on his basis of truth, to Colonel Onslow, disclaimed all knowledge of Krilov. It had been the essence of the old Russian régime that secret agents should have no acquaintance one with another. It was a common thing for two men, unsuspectingly, to be employed on an identical mission. The old Imperial service depended on this system of checks. If the missions were identical, the various incidents were bound to be similar. He had defended his position with every sophistical argument his alert brain could devise. He drew, as red herrings across the track, the names of obscure chieftains known to Colonel Onslow, whom he had not mentioned in his book; described them—one long-nosed, foxy, pitted with smallpox; another obese and oily; to Colonel Onslow’s mind irrefutable evidence of his acquaintance with the country. But as to narrated incidents he had seen puzzled incredulity behind the Colonel’s eyes and had felt his semi-accusing coldness of manner when their conversation came to an end.