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I found a long letter from my sister Emily waiting for me when I got home.

She gave me four sheets of news about Ireland, thrillingly depressing news, with that strong dash of grotesque farce which always rescues Irish crime from sordidness. At the end of the letter came a request totally unconnected with Irish affairs.

“I want you,” she wrote, “to use your influence with Edmund Troyte to get a passport to Megalia for Janet Church. You remember Janet, I’m sure.”

I remembered Janet Church perfectly well. She is a bony lowland Scot, and when I met her at Emily’s house she was touring Ireland on behalf of a temperance society. I remember her saying at dinner that she would rather put a red-hot poker into her mouth than a glass of wine. That, I am sure, was not true. However much she might dislike wine she could always spit it out again. She could not spit out a red-hot poker. But Emily believed her. Emily would believe anything. She is a most religious woman and devoted to the Church to such an extent that she seriously embarrasses the rector of her parish.

“Janet Church,” Emily went on, “is going to Megalia as the representative of the Society for the Establishment of World Peace through the influence of the Union of Christian Churches. There seems to be a wonderful opening in Lystria, which is now part of the Republic of Megalia. The present patriarch——”

According to Emily, the present patriarch is a man of singularly plastic mind, willing to unite his church with any other in the interests of world peace.

I put Emily’s letter into a nice, flat varnished basket which stands on my writing-table and is meant to contain unanswered letters. Emily gave me that basket last year as a Christmas present. I was glad to be able to use it for a letter of hers. I had of course no intention whatever of asking Troyte to get a passport for Janet Church.

But I did not get rid of the business so easily as that. Next day Janet Church called on me. In appearance she was just as I remembered her, in determination rather worse. The passport to Megalia had been refused. She attributed that to the hatred which the Foreign Office felt to the idea of a world peace and to Lord Edmund Troyte’s dread of the influence of a union of the Christian Churches.

I dare say she was right in blaming Troyte. Knowing what he did about the condition of Lystria, he can not possibly have wanted to add to the confusion of the coming revolution by letting loose an earnest Scotchwoman in the country. Also, he probably thought that the Patriarch Menelaus would be too much occupied preparing for a royal marriage and coronation to have any time to spare for planning a world union of Christian Churches.

Janet Church had actually seen Troyte once, making her way to his office by means of a letter of introduction from Emily. She evidently tried to bully him, for he firmly refused to see her again. What she wanted was that I should go and bully him on her behalf.

“With the peace of Europe hanging in the balance,” she said, “and the prospect of another war within ten years, it is of vital importance that the influence of the Christian Churches, of all of them——”

“All,” I murmured sympathetically, “all, all.”

“Should be brought to bear on our statesmen. And how is that to be done?”

“Only,” I said, “by means of a union of Christian Churches.”

“Especially the Church of Lystria,” said Janet.

I could not see why the Lystrian Church, which must be quite a small body, should be so very important. But Janet Church evidently thought it was. So, I dare say, did Emily.

“Couldn’t you,” I said, “write to the patriarch instead of going to see him?”

“A personal interview is much better than a letter.”

“His name,” I said encouragingly, “is Menelaus. A letter addressed to His Beatitude the Patriarch Menelaus, Lystria, would be sure to find him.”

“A personal interview is indispensable.”

If the patriarch is the least like Troyte in character, or like me, Janet Church may have one personal interview with him but will certainly not have another. I suppose she realized that she was not likely to get into my flat again, for she refused to leave until I had promised to do what I could with Troyte about the passport.

I kept the promise and made an appeal to Troyte. He does not actually issue passports, but he could certainly have got one for her if he had liked. At first he flatly refused to do anything.

“I know all about that woman,” he said. “She makes trouble wherever she goes. Two Papal Nuncios in different places, three Calvinist bishops and several Jewish rabbis have been complaining about her.”

“The rabbis had no reason to grumble,” I said. “It’s only Christian Churches she wants to unite. She can’t have been bothering them.”

“Anyhow, they did complain,” said Troyte, “and I can’t have letters coming to me by every courier from all the legations in Europe asking me to keep that woman at home.”

“If you set any value on your own peace and mine,” I said, “you’ll give her a passport to Lystria and then keep her there. Don’t let her back into this country.”

“I wish,” said Troyte, “that all religious women were in Heaven.”

“If you let her go to Lystria,” I said, “she probably will be in Heaven soon. I don’t know the patriarch personally, but he’ll execute her before she’s been a week there if he’s half as savage as Norheys says.”

Troyte asked what Norheys had been saying about the patriarch. I could only reply that I was mistaken in saying that he thought about the patriarch at all. The person he called savage was the princess.

“He seems quite sure,” I said, “that she’s black.”

“Nonsense.”

“And tattooed all over.”

“He knows perfectly well that she’s nothing of the sort,” said Troyte. “That’s merely an excuse to get out of marrying her.”

I felt that this was a good opportunity for delivering Norheys’ message.

“I suppose you know,” I said, “that he’s formally engaged to Miss Temple and means to marry her.”

“We must get him out of that entanglement,” said Troyte. “And the best way of doing it is to push on the marriage with the Princess Calypso.”

“Until you’ve convinced him that she isn’t black——”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Troyte. “She’s an extremely good-looking and attractive girl, far too good for him. I’ve given him her photograph.”

“Photos are often faked,” I said. “Couldn’t you get a colored portrait so that he could see for himself that she isn’t black. If you had her painted in an evening dress it would go some way to relieve his mind about the tattooing. He’d know that her arms and neck were clear, anyhow.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be flippant,” said Troyte. “This is really rather a serious business. There’s the question of the oil—a matter of imperial interest, and Cable says he’s pushed things on so far that Lystria is on the verge of a revolution. I really don’t know what would happen if the patriarch and Count Casimir were to bring off their coup d’etat and there was no king to put on the throne.”

I did not mean to be flippant. I had only gone on talking about the color of the Princess Calypso because I found it extremely difficult to make the proposal that Norheys had charged me with. At last I made the plunge.

“I wonder,” I said, “if anything in the way of a morganatic marriage could be arranged?”

“Certainly not.”

“It’s sometimes done,” I said. “I’m sure I’ve heard of cases.”

“Certainly not. The last king, Wladislaws, was far too fond of that sort of thing. His life was a scandal, and the patriarch was on the verge of excommunicating him several times. The patriarch holds very strong views on the sanctity of marriage and—and—all cognate subjects.”

“If the patriarch is the sort of man who would tackle a king,” I said, “he’ll probably be able to deal with Janet Church. Why not give her a passport? Look here, Troyte, let’s compromise. I’ll say no more about Miss Temple and the morganatic marriage if you’ll let Janet Church go to Lystria. She’ll worry the life out of me if you don’t.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Troyte. “I’ll let her have a passport to Germany, but not an inch farther. She can go to Berlin if she likes and stay there.”

“That’s something,” I replied. “She’ll be out of London anyhow.”

“I’m sorry for the Germans,” said Troyte.

“Oh, they deserve it. After all, what’s the use of our having won the war if we can’t do anything afterward to make them feel uncomfortable?”

I called on Janet Church in her hotel and told her my news. I was afraid she would be furious with Troyte for limiting her wanderings. To my surprise she took it very well.

“If I get as far as Germany,” she said, “I’ll manage to go on somehow.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“If I were a criminal flying from justice I should be able to tour Europe without a passport at all. They all do.”

That appears to be true.

“So the thing is evidently possible,” said Janet, “and if it’s possible I’ll do it.”

“Well,” I said, “good-by and good luck. If you find yourself languishing in a Siberian dungeon, send a line to the nearest British consul.”

“I’m not going anywhere near Siberia,” said Janet.

“You may not mean to,” I said, “but you never know where you’ll fetch up when you start traveling in the Near East.”