“Look here,” said Wylie, “that will do. You, and Smith’s—I mean Teffany’s—bankers, and Professor Panagiotis, all persist that there can’t be a second sister. I tell you there is, for I have seen her and talked to her. I have the honour of both the Miss Smiths’—the Miss Teffanys’, I mean—acquaintance, and whatever stupid mystery you may manage to cook up, I’m certain there’s the most ordinary explanation if we only knew it. I don’t want any more jokes on the subject.”
“Awfully sorry,” said the artist hastily, as the stranger withdrew with a smile; “but it is funny, you know.”
“To you, perhaps. Who’s your grinning friend?”
“A Greek—Mitsopoulo his name is—good sort of chap. Knows the ropes, puts me up to all sorts of things. His sister is married to the Scythian Consul-General—frightfully handsome woman. But he’s only staying here.”
“I don’t know why you called him in,” said Wylie uneasily. “We don’t want Scythia mixed up in this business.”
The artist stared at him. “Oh, I say,” he laughed, “there’s no doubt where you come from, is there? ‘Keep your powder dry, and hate a Scythian like the devil’—that’s about the mark of you North-West Frontier men, isn’t it?”
“What do you know about the North-West Frontier?” growled Wylie. “I’m off to Professor Panagiotis to get this thing cleared up. I shall end by wringing the old blighter’s neck for him, I know.”
“So long!” said the artist pacifically, for he had not yet got all the information he wanted, and he settled down to a sketch for his picture, leaving the girls’ faces blank, while Wylie, refusing the offers of donkey-boys and cab-drivers, tramped off to Kallimeri. The Professor had learnt to dread his coming, and distinguished on this occasion in the very sound of his footsteps fresh cause for alarm. Wylie gave him no opportunity of denying the identification established by the sketch, but demanded bluntly the reason of the change of name, and why he had not been told of it before. The only course was to explain the whole of the circumstances, and this the Professor took.
“You see, then,” he ended, “that not a breath of this must creep out. Our young friend stands in the way of both Scythian and Thraco-Dardanian ambitions, and if it was known who he was, it would be fatally easy to arrange for his death—at the hands of the brigands, by a fall in the mountains, by a shot from a Roumi rifle. It would occur so naturally that there would be no room for inquiry, and his sister, who would otherwise inherit his claims, would share his fate. Now do you see why I kept you in the dark? It was for their sake. I feared that by some inadvertence”—Wylie moved angrily—“Well, now that you know the truth, and what hangs upon your silence, you will see that nothing must be said. There is a dangerous man at your hotel—Nicetas Mitsopoulo, a Greek traitor in Scythian employ—beware of him.”
“Your warning comes a little late. The gentleman you mention was present when I discovered the truth.”