"My ammunition was no good!... But I am at a loss to understand what
they are trying to do with ME.... Certainly I don't look like a very
important personage in my present state.... Yet my captors are not
treating me very badly ... aside from being locked up in this deserted
villa with its broken chairs and vacant picture frames and general air
of hasty abandonment there's nothing to disturb the tranquillity of my
reflections except the recurring tramp of the muffled sentry below
my broken window ... this building has a sort of Byzantine cut in its
architectural design.... On the other side of the valley there's a
minaret or two visible through the smoky haze.... Off to the left I
can make out quite distinctly the outlines of a Greek Cross.... The
road leading toward that Cross looks like the work of a Muscovite
engineer,--which speaks well for it.... It's built of the same
material as the one over the mountains from Tiflis to Vladicaucaz and
Kislovodsk.... I MUST BE ON RUSSIAN SOIL!... But what is _mystifying_
to me is, _how did that veiled girl_ of the Métropole manage to know
the SENTRY who is guarding my person so methodically down below?...
She has been here twice, now, and talks to him very confidentially....
QUATSCH! if she thinks to find _any_ jewelry clinging to my person
she'll have to fry me to get it out."