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And what of that other, the telegram which, forwarded by Nogam's hand to Sturm, should long since have set in motion the organized machinery of murder and demolition?
It was the merest of glimpses; for Victor's casual glance had barely identified the servant when Nogam started guiltily and in a twinkling disappeared; but a glimpse was enough for eyes and a mind alike quick with distrust, enough to assure Victor that Nogam's face had worn an indescribably furtive and hangdog expression, most unlike its ordinary look of amiable stupidity, and widely incongruous with the veniality of his fault.
This room is searched regularly by Shaik Tsin. So is Nogam's. It is certain there is neither a dictograph installed here nor any means at Nogam's disposal for connecting with a dictograph installation. Indeed, so closely is Nogam watched, and by more cunning eyes than mine sometimes I begin to be afraid he is simply what he seems." "Then you do suspect him!" "My good Sturm, I suspect everybody."
Neither was Victor, with all the ill-will in the world, able to find fault with Nogam's services in his new office. The most finished of self-effacing valets, he knew just what to do and did it without being told; and when he spoke it was only because he had been spoken to or commissioned to convey a message.
And in this grateful obscurity Nogam permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered Nogam's probable duration of life an interesting speculation.
Still more disquieting Victor thought the circumstance that nobody else had seemed to notice that anomalous light in Nogam's eyes; which of course might mean merely that Victor had worked himself into such a state of nerves that he was seeing things, but equally well that the look was one reserved for Victor alone, intentionally or not holding for him a message, if he had but had the wit to read it, of peculiarly personal import.
Other than bad manners and worse morals, the one genuine thing in the whole establishment was, it seemed, the historic collection of family jewels. This information explained away much of Nogam's perplexity on one score.
Some thought of the same sort may well have troubled Nogam's mind as he sat in an otherwise untenanted third-class compartment blinking owlishly over the example of Victor's command of the intricacies of Chinese writing. He was happily free of surveillance for the first time in his waking hours of many days.
In a voice more than commonly rich with accent, Sturm demanded sharply: "What is this? I do not understand!" He shook in Nogam's face the half-sheet of notepaper on which the Chinese phonograms were drawn. "Sorry, sir, but I 'aven't any hidea. Prince Victor didn't tell me anything except there would be no answer, and I was to 'urry right back to Frampton Court."
Perhaps it was nervousness bred of this anxiety that, in the end, made Nogam's hand slip. Or perhaps the impatient nature of the man who lay so closely secret within the husk of Nogam decided him upon a desperate gamble. In either event, this befell: About the middle of the evening Prince Victor happened to look up from an interesting tête-
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