Next day, at Semlin, where our passports were examined, the passport-officer took off his hat to him, bowed low and viséd his passport without question, saying, as he handed back the document to its owner:
“Bon voyage, Altesse.”
I stared at the pair. My fussy friend with the big head must therefore be either a prince or a grand duke! Just then I was not a prince—only plain M’sieur Martin. In Roumania princes are as plentiful as blackberries, so I put him down as a Roumanian.
As I sat opposite him at dinner that night he was discussing with me the harmful writings of some newly discovered German who was posing as a cheap philosopher, and denouncing them as dangerous to the community. He leaned his elbow upon the narrow table and supported his clean-shaven chin upon his finger, displaying to me most, certainly by accident, the palm of his thin right hand.
What I discovered there caused me a good deal of surprise. In its centre was a dark livid mark, as though it had been branded there by a hot iron, the plain and distinct imprint of a cat’s-paw!
It fascinated me. There was some hidden meaning in that mark, I felt convinced. It was just as though a cat had stepped upon blood with one of its fore-paws and trodden upon his hand.
Whether he noticed that I had detected it or not, I cannot say, but he moved his hand quickly, and ever after kept it closed.
His name, he told me at last, was Konstantinos Vassos, and he lived in Athens. But I took that information cum grano, for I knew him to be a prince travelling incognito. The passport-officer at Semlin makes no mistakes.
But if actually a prince, why did he carry a passport?
There is, unfortunately, no good hotel at Sofia. The best is the Bulgarie, kept by a pleasant old lady to whom I was well-known as M’sieur Martin, and in this we found ourselves next night installed. He gave his name as Vassos, and to all intents and purposes was more of a stranger in Prince Ferdinand’s capital than I myself was, for I had been there at least half a dozen times before. Most of the Ministers knew me, and I was always elected a member of the smart diplomats’ club, the Union, during my stay.