that poor boy - to have come all these thousands of miles, only to
walk into a trap! Had he found that note? Had they killed him?
Doubtless they had or Boris Karlov would not be in this room.

"We killed him to-night, Stefani, in your rooms. We threw out the
food so he would have to seek something to eat. The last of that
breed, stem and branch! We are no longer the mud; we ourselves
are the heels. We are conquering the world. Today Europe is ours;
to-morrow, America!"

A wintry little smile stirred the lips of the man in the chair.
America, with its keen perceptions of the ridiculous, its withering
humour!

"No more the dissolute opera dancers will dance to your fiddling,
Stefani, while we starve in the town. Fiddler, valet, tutor, the
rivers and seas of Russia are red. We roll east and west, and our
emblem is red. Stem and branch! We ground our heels in their faces
as for centuries they ground theirs in ours. He escaped us there
- but I was Nemesis. He died to-night."

The body in the chair relaxed a little. "He was clean and honest,
Boris. I made him so. He would have done fine things if you had
let him live."

"That breed?"

"Why, you yourself loved him when he was a boy!"

"Stem and branch! I loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did