“This morning--” he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him. “This morning I picked up a scrap of information.” He drew towards him a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin. The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross, Deulin threw the paper across the table. “You know that man?” “I do not know his name,” replied Cartoner. “No; no one knows that,” replied Deulin. “It is one of the very few mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up.” Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content to be known only by a mark. “Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,” said Deulin, after a pause. “One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo for many years here. Suppose--suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the creating of an opportunity.” “Anarchy?” inquired Cartoner. “The ladies of the party call it Nihilism,” replied the Frenchman, with an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay a lady. “Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people. They waited thirty years.” “And struck too hastily, after all,” commented Deulin. “Bukaty would not link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait longer, and are therefore less patient--men of a more modern stamp, without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way--” “The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to his lights,” interrupted Cartoner. “Ah! since you say so,” returned Deulin, with a significant gesture, “yes.” “Bon sang,” said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying. “He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.” But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train of thought. “So you know of Kosmaroff?” he said, studying his companion's face. “You know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that.” “In Warsaw,” guessed Cartoner. “Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin--towards London, by the same token.” Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail. “That parishioner is in London, too,” he said, in his own tongue--and the word means more in French.