--_Troilus and Cressida._
"The knowledge that you're alive gives me no pleasure," growled the grim
old Austrian premier.
"Thank you!" laughed John Armitage, to whom he had spoken. "You have lost
none of your old amiability; but for a renowned diplomat, you are
remarkably frank. When I called on you in Paris, a year ago, I was able
to render you--I believe you admitted it--a slight service."
Count Ferdinand von Stroebel bowed slightly, but did not take his eyes
from the young man who sat opposite him in his rooms at the Hotel Monte
Rosa in Geneva. On the table between them stood an open despatch box, and
about it lay a number of packets of papers which the old gentleman, with
characteristic caution, had removed to his own side of the table before
admitting his caller. He was a burly old man, with massive shoulders and
a great head thickly covered with iron-gray hair.
He trusted no one, and this accounted for his presence in Geneva in
March, of the year 1903, whither he had gone to receive the report of the
secret agents whom he had lately despatched to Paris on an errand of
peculiar delicacy.
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