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extraordinary excitement. He cried as if he were making an announcement of the first importance:
"The Suvarov is in the harbour!"
Mr. Van Groot stared at the speaker with what was perhaps meant to be an air of dignified surprise.
"Miss Fraser, people use your room in a very casual fashion, as if ignoring what may be going on they are at liberty to go in and out how and when they please. And pray, sir, who are you, and what may the Suvarov be?"
"The Suvarov?" Mr. Yashvin stared at the multi-millionaire as if he wondered who he might be. "The Suvarov is a Russian ship of war. It is in the harbour that means trouble."
"And pray, sir," continued Mr. Van Groot, "why should the presence in the harbour of a Russian ship of war mean trouble?"
Mr. Yashvin laughed, as if the question struck him as uncomfortably ridiculous.
"You will see! We all of us shall see! It is all up with us!"
Mr. Van Groot stared as if he thought the speaker was a lunatic. Before he could ask the question which seemed shaping on his lips, the door opened again and someone else came into the room, someone who moved to the table on which was the piece of chamois leather with its glittering ornaments.
"I have come," he announced, "for the Romanoff pearls."
CHAPTER XXXV
THE GREAT TEMPTATION
THE new-comer was a tall thin man who spoke with an air of authority which had a curious effect upon those who listened. They stared as if he were a supernatural being. Catherine, still leaning, glancing round, seemed to see in him some shadowy reminiscence.
"Where," she said in an undertone, as if unconscious that she was speaking aloud, "have I seen him before?"
"Some of you," the stranger continued, "know who I am." He had on a long black overcoat, which he unbuttoned and threw wide open, revealing on a coat beneath a little silver star attached to a broad strip of curious-coloured braid. Beneath this w
