[Pg xiv]

The building was still standing, but a great jagged opening had been ripped through the upper stories. A watchman was on guard. Several people had been killed, he said. The ambulance and police had come and gone. The guests had scattered. It was clear that the owner of the little bag was not there, and I had no time to search for her. The sun was rising, and I was under orders to be at the railway station to take a train that would leave in fifteen minutes. So I jumped into the Metro and set off on my journey to the front, taking the stranger’s bag with me.

During the days that followed, so busy that we could not believe anything lay outside our crowded wards, I forgot both property and owner. Only when I reached Paris several months later did I make an effort to discover[Pg xv] her. After consulting the police and the American Embassy officials without result, I decided to break open the lock and see if there was any clue inside to her identity.

[Pg xv]

The bag proved to be full of papers which I felt obliged to read. What might they contain?—romance, scandals, and maybe military secrets? There was a clipping about a mysterious Russian Prince masquerading under the name of Kosloff, and a Red Cross badge and some secret service insignia. Did these badges belong to the blonde lady herself or to the Prince, or to her friend, the diplomat mentioned in the letters? Well, we will see. I searched the lists of American Embassy officials for the diplomat, but without success; I discovered that their names were legion, and the Prince, too, I was unable to trace.

The difficulties lay in the fact that all the letters were signed with nicknames—and with the death of so many people in the war and the length of time which had evidently passed since they were written, most of the avenues of identification had been blocked.

Nevertheless I put notices in several of the[Pg xvi] Paris papers asking for information regarding a little fair-haired American woman who had disappeared from the Grande Hotel du Nord during the night of the air raid, leaving a black morocco bag in charge of a stranger. The only three letters which I received in answer were as follows:

[Pg xvi]

CONTENTS

[Pg xvii]

Dear Madame,

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