The door which led into the Baron's bedroom from his own was slightly ajar. Philip, about to close it, fancied he heard the stealthy rustle of paper beyond and swung it noiselessly back, halting in silent interest upon the threshold.
Themar, the Baron's Houdanian valet, was intently transcribing upon his shirt-cuff, the contents of a paper which lay uppermost in the drawer of a small portable desk.
Catlike, Philip stole across the room. The man's hand was laboriously reproducing upon the linen an intricate message in cipher.
"Difficult, too, isn't it?" sympathized Philip smoothly at his elbow.
With a sharp cry, Themar wheeled, his small, shifting eyes black with hate. They wavered and fell beneath the level, icy stare of the American. Philip's fingers slipped viselike along the other's wrists and Philip's voice grew more acidly polite.
"My dear Themar," he regretted, falling unconsciously into the language of his chief, "I must spoil the symmetry of your wardrobe. The hieroglyphical cuff, if you please."
Themar's snarl was unintelligible. Smiling, Philip unbuttoned the stiff band of linen and drew it slowly off.
"A pity!" said he with gentle, sarcastic apology in his eyes. "Such perfect work! And after all that infernal bother of stealing the key!"
Philip lightly dropped the cuff into the pocket of his coat.
"And the key, Themar," he reminded gently, "the key to the Baron's desk? . . . Ah, so it's still here. Excellent! And now that the drawer is locked again--"
The hall door creaked. Simultaneously Themar and Philip wheeled. The Baron stood in the doorway.
Philip smiled and bowed.
"Excellency," said he, "Themar in an over-zealous desire to rearrange your private papers has acquired your private key and I have taken the liberty of confiscating it, knowing that you prize its possession. Permit me to return it now."
"Thank you, Poynter!" said the Baron and glanced keenly at Themar. "It is but now that I had missed it."
"Excellency," burst forth Themar desperately, "I found it this morning on the rug."
"But," purred the Baron, "why seek a keyhole?"
Themar's dark face was ashen.
Philip, with a wholesome distaste for scenes, slipped away.
"Excellency," burst forth Themar passionately as the door closed, "it is unfair--"
The Baron raised his hand in a gesture of warning.
"Permit me, Themar," he said coldly as the sound of Philip's footsteps died away, "permit me to remind you that my secretary is quite unaware of our peculiar relations. He is laboring at present under the necessary delusion that your arrival here was entirely the result of my fastidious distaste for the personal services of anyone but a fellow countryman. Presumably I had cabled home for you. I prefer," he added, "that he continue to think so."