When Brad returned at ten the following day, Chavadzy met him in a state of agitation.
"Come with me to the Empress at once," the Russian demanded.
"What has happened, Chavadzy? What the hell is going on?"
Chavadzy answered him brusquely. "She's gone, that's what's going on!"
"Who is gone?" asked Brad, his long legs hurrying to match the short Russian's rapid pace.
"Romelle!" Chavadzy snapped. "And she took her American dog with her."
They found the entire wedding party around the breakfast room table with Eugénie.
The Empress looked up from a paper when the two men rushed in.
"Thank God, you've come, Lieutenant Duncan!" she declared. "Everyone knows about you."
Kathy leapt up and embraced him.
"Oh, Brad," she wept, "I'm Kathy. Remember me?"
"Kathy! What has happened? Where is Romelle?"
Kathy cried against his shoulder. "We don't know. Adrienne was with her, and....."
The housekeeper slapped her fingertips to her temples. "Mon Dieu, I fell asleep in the chair! I betrayed her! Je suis en défaut! I am to blame!"
The Empress tapped her palm on the table. "That will be enough from all of you! This is a time for clear thinking, not a time for blame. Lieutenant, she apparently awoke in the middle of the night, endued some clothing, packed a small bag, took Rebel, and disappeared. She left me this."
Eugénie raised the paper she held in her hand. "It is a power-of-attorney assigned to me, 'in the event,' she writes, 'I do not return.' I have been given full authority over the estate until I receive word from her. She asks to have Kathy return Captain Duncan's body to Baltimore for burial, to have Adrienne return to Paris and maintain the house in the Place Dauphine, and to do whatever I believe necessary in the disposition of the captain's affairs. The girl is not in her right mind! Chavadzy, what did you give her last night? You even drugged me!"
The overbearing Russian stood staring out the window, his arms crossed on his chest. He made no reply.
The Empress twisted in her chair. She glared at the red blossoms on the wallpaper.
"Curse you, Dragon's Heart!" she murmured.
Brad's own heart leapt in his breast.
"Oh, God!" he muttered in anguish. "Oh, God, not that!"
Chavadzy wheeled. "Not what, Lieutenant?"
Brad sat down. He slumped over the table on his elbows, his forehead resting on his hands. "Did...did she take the ruby?"
Adrienne gasped. "Yes, she cut it from the gown."
Brad sat up, tossed his head back, and exhaled a long, deep sigh. "I think I know where she has gone. God help me, I think I know."
Everyone hung on his words as he told them of his bedside visit with Romelle, when he spoke of Dragon's Heart as a place in Mongolia..
Chavadzy was furious. "Why did you not tell me last night? I warned you hallucinating might be dangerous to her! I could have given her....."
"Stop this haranguing, Chavadzy!" the Empress intervened. "What would you have given her? Another drug? Fie! You doctors are all the same."
Abruptly, her strident tone melted away. Her shoulders slumped. She looked as though she might cry.
"There is but one important point here," she added. "Our darling girl is gone. How shall we ever find her?"
"It will not be difficult at all," said Cocteau.
"What do you mean?" Chavadzy blustered. "She must cross all Europe, all Russia, to reach the East! She may even be in disguise! Finding her, a simple thing? What would a nancy boy like you know about the real world? You don't even dress like a gentleman!"
 Cocteau shrugged.
"There's no hole in my pocket," he quipped, pulling his pocket inside out.
Chavadzy bristled as the young man continued, "So I've got plenty of cents, common though that sense may be!"
But for the seriousnes of the situation, all save the Russian would have enjoyed his inspired wit.
Ignoring Chavadzy, Cocteau addressed Brad directly when he next said: "Don't look for Romy. Look for Rebel. He is your clue."
Chavadzy gaped in astonishment.
"My God, he's right!" Brad exclaimed.
The Empress stood up to embrace Cocteau. "God bless you, Jean," she said, glowering over his shoulder at Chavadzy. "You're a genius! You can teach the petit bourgeois a thing or two about the measure of true manhood!"
A worldly sophisticate despite her devotion to the Church, Eugénie had always been accepting, as had Philo and Romelle, of the known homosexuality of Cocteau and Lucien and a great many of their friends in the realm of the arts, from the author Marcel Proust to Philo's good friend, composer Camille Saint-Saëns.
She turned coldly to the Russian. "As for you, Doctor Chavadzy, get out of my house! And may your dark angels protect you from my wrath if anything dreadful happens to my godchild. Do your job properly this time, or you will have far more to fear from me - and from the Tsar - than from any Manchu!"
Chavadzy, breaking into a sweat at her pointed reference to his boss, the Tsar, slunk out of her presence, thoroughly cowed.
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