here since I left?”      

       “Yes, sir. A foreign-looking gentleman called. He said he knew you, sir. I showed him into your room.”      

       The same night, well on in the small hours, the telephone rang. Roland dragged himself out of bed.     

       “Hullo?”      

       “Is that Senor Bleke?”      

       “Yes. What is it?”      

       “Beware!”      

       Things were becoming intolerable. Roland had a certain amount of nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then? Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was that toad. And all because a perfectly respectful admiration for the caoutchouc had led him to occupy a stage-box several nights in succession at the theater where the peerless Maraquita tied herself into knots.     

       There was an air of unusual excitement in Maraquita's manner at their next meeting.     

       “We have been in communication with Him,” she whispered. “He will receive you. He will give an audience to the Savior of Paranoya.”      

       “Eh? Who will?”      

       “Our beloved Alejandro. He wishes to see his faithful servant. We are to go to him at once.”      

       “Where?”      

       “At his own house. He will receive you in person.”      

       Such was the quality of the emotions through which he had been passing of late, that Roland felt but a faint interest at the prospect of meeting face to face a genuine—if exiled—monarch. The thought did flit through his mind that they would sit up a bit in old Fineberg's office if they could hear of it, but it brought him little consolation.     

       The cab drew up at a gloomy-looking house in a fashionable square. Roland       

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