Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/39

 those four years, I'd venture, cost the Russian government a good many million rubles in military leaks. Then she rather dropped out of things for a few years, for she actually fell in love with a young artist and stuck to him like a bur until the family railroaded the boy out of the country. To-day she's an exceptionally adroit and attractive woman of the panther type, at the dangerous age of thirty, and with her claws this time set in the flesh of a Lieutenant-Colonel Diehms out here."

"And has Diehms been—?" Wilsnach seemed reluctant to put his fellow-officer's fall into words,

"I'm afraid so."

"Poor devil!"

"Yes, poor devil, for he has a wife and two children at Wilmington, and Shrubb wires me they're the right sort!"

"And does the Makaieff woman dream you're on her trail?"

"Naturally not, or she'd even let Diehms out of her claws to get away. It makes me sick to see that poor devil dancing about with her. He's like a man in a trance."

"Could she care for him?"

"Not a rap! What she's after is Navy