And because she fears her history will not be finished before that unannounced daybreak when she will be placed blindfolded before the high stone wall facing a firing squad of French soldiers, she has ordered her lawyer, M. Edouard Clunet, to plead for a stay of execution. So Mata-Hari writes feverishly, and all Paris waits eagerly--except the one who waits apprehensively--to see if she will name the "ami" who gave her the first inkling of the tanks. Pinned to the corsage of the Empire-cut black silk dress which Mata-Hari wears in her narrow cell in Saint Lazare Prison is a curious gold brooch. It is shaped like a twisted dragon, and its eyes are emeralds and its darting tongue a carrot-shaped ruby. "It will be there--right over my heart--when I go away--when I stand before those men with guns aimed to kill me," says Mata-Hari. (Told in the _New York World_.) (Since these stories were written Mata-Hari has gone to her death blindfolded before the firing squad. She met her execution stoically.) III--ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF MATA-HARI This is told by a man who for obvious reasons will not allow his name to be used: "I knew Mata-Hari in Paris. I called on her at her home at Nieully-sur-Seine. The sinister character in Dumas' great romance was not more cunning or adventurous nor played for higher stakes than did Mlle. Mata-Hari. In many respects their histories should be printed in parallel columns. But I believe that for adventure, for cunning, for her great influence over the destiny of those with whom she came in contact, Mlle. Mata-Hari was more dreadful than 'Miladi.' "Her father was a subject of the Netherlands and her mother was a Javanese. He died when she was an infant, and in order to protect her from the dangers which beset a young girl of mixed blood in the East her mother fled from Java with her when she was three years old and entered Burma. There, to further protect her, she pledged her to celibacy and placed her in a Buddhist temple to learn dancing. Then it appeared that her destiny would be not unlike that of thousands of other young girls in that country and similar in many respects to that of the old vestals of ancient Greece. In Burma these dancers are called bayadère. "She told me that when she was twelve years old she was disgusted with life and was determined to change it or end it. After a dance at a great Buddhist festival in Burma, when she was about fourteen years old, she saw a British officer and fell in love with him. It was her first love affair. She managed to escape from the temple and joined him. This man was a baronet and loved her. Finally they married. Two children, a boy and a girl, were born of their union.