“I am an American citizen; and nothing else matters just now. This is more for the Princess Gatrina than for me. She had to be saved, and I couldn’t do it with kid gloves on.” He thought over this.
“It is either a right or a wrong thing you are asking of me. If right I do not desire to be paid for it; if wrong, I am not to be bribed to do it;” and he pushed back toward me the money I had offered him for his church.
“It’s clean money,” I said, getting up. “You needn’t be afraid. Keep it untouched until you are satisfied it is clean and then use it, or not, as you please. I should like to have a report of what you do.”
“To whom shall I send it?”
“To me. You heard my name—Burgwan—and can send to that name under cover to this address in Vienna;” and I wrote the name of a man so well known that he started.
“Baron Burndoff, the great banker.”
“Yes, the banker,” I repeated; “and my friend.”
“I don’t understand it,” he murmured, half to himself.
“There is one other little favour you might render me. I need badly a fresh suit of clothes. Could you tell me how to get one?”
“I do not furnish disguises, sir,” he answered, so curtly that I almost smiled, as I retorted, suavely: