Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-04-02

When Katmirof went aboard the coast
ing steamer at Constantinope he was
pleased with almost everything. He was
pleased with himself for having obtained
his present mission-the most important
which had ever been intrusted to him dur
ing his twenty years of diplomatic life; he
was pleased with the Russian embassy at
the porte for giving 1t to him. He was
furthermore gratihed by the knowledge
that his daughter Irene was safe under
the wing of the ambassadors wife In Con-
stantinople, and he was probably best
pleased of all that Howard was no longer
in the city.
katmiron did not like Howard This
was partly due to his nationality. for Kat
miroff did not like Americans, though long
ago, while an attache at Washington, he
had married an American wife. The poor
lady, perhaps, found unexpected features
In diplomatic life; at any rate, she had
now been for ten years in Pere Lachaise
cemetery, above Paris, and her daughter,
after an exhaustive experience of French
convent schools, had Joined her father In
the east.
At first Katmirof was inclined to regard
his RuSSian-Amercan daughter as in
cumbrance, but when conception of the
girls really wonder full beauty penetrated
him he began to see in her a most eff
cient tool for his advancement and incl
dentally for her own. They had spent two
winters in ST. Petersburg society since.
Katmiroff came of a good and rich family
and the family, if not now so rich, was as
good as ever Blood royal he considered
scarcely beyond his daughters reach, and
the benefit to himself of a powerful alli-
ance is beyond need of statement He
dreamed of lucrative governorship, of
rich court sinecure But in these calcula-
tions he forgot Irene's sem-Americl IN an
cestry, and he was not then aware of How
ard existence.
Howard appeared in Turkey the next
summer. engaged in selling sewing ma
chimes and small electric devices to the
Moslem for a Philadelphia firm He was
introduced to the Katmiroffs by the Amer
lean consul general and appeared gen.
tleman. He was thirty good looking and
spoke French we'll The Russian diplomat
guilelessly took the viper to his bosom
A little later he permitted him to ride with
Miss Irene up the h.ll road toward Galata,
attended by a gorgeous consular drago-
man. and he was without suspicion till in
the autumn the bomb burst under his very
nose. Katmiroff himself came near burst
ing and he did not waste many words on
the presumptuous American. Irene, weep
Ing, told Howard that she would never
marry any other man, which the eff
feet of her American blood; but she said
that her first duty was obedience to her
father and this was the Russian blood.
Howard said that he owed no duties of
obedience to anybody.
Howard thereupon disappeared from the
he had gone up the Black to sell sew
ing machines and electric bells in Odessa
and Varna. Shortly afterward came Katmi-
roffs appointment to his delicate miss on.
He did not attach much Importance to
1rene's protestations and he was satisfied
with, the tangible fact of Towards alb
sence. so that he felt free to devote an
untroubled mind to his errand. which. in
deed, was of a sort to demand exclusive
mental concentration.
Katmiroff knew well that his whole fu-
ture career was staked on his present sue
cess and, above all, on the deadly Sc
crecy that must enshroud his doings. 1t
Is as good as known, to be sure, that Rus
STA is holding hands with the Young Turks
revolutionary party and the Macedonian
malcontents, but this is not the same thing
official proof, much less of such a COM
pact Katmiroff authorized to en-
gtneer. The Russian felt as If he carried
dynamite, but he was used to explosive
secrets and he slept none the less sweetly
in his narrow state room while the steamer
wallowed up the coast toward Midia.