The Accounting

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Gordon Bannock, a U.S. Secret Service operator, is commissioned by his chief to get certain papers bearing upon the alliance of two European principalities that are of vital importance. Bannock, in the disguise of an interpreter, gains admission to a council of officials of Retrograd and Galla, bent on forming an alliance. He hears the entire proceedings, interpreting for the officials. After the council is concluded he steals the treaty papers and flees. Olga Petroff, the cleverest spy of Retrograd, is called to recover the papers. She heads off Bannock, bribes an innkeeper to lame Bannock's horse, which forces him to appeal for shelter at a peasant's cottage whither Olga has preceded him. She pretends to be Velvia, daughter of the peasant couple. Bannock is charmed by the girl's simple beauty. Suddenly soldiers are heard approaching. Bannock reveals himself to Gondine, who denounces the government of Retrograd and promises to help him. Bannock conceals himself in the wood. The soldiers try to force Gondine to reveal the hiding place of Bannock, and when he refuses slays him and his wife. Bannock hears the shots and returns to the cottage to find the soldiers gone and Velvia sobbing over the bodies of the peasants. He thinks she now is alone in the world and asks her to marry him. She consents. After the marriage they take refuge in an inn. Olga snatches the papers from Bannock's hands and two of her aids cover him with guns. She then tells him it was all a trick, all the occurrences had been planned by herself to trick him out of the papers. Though she has really fallen in love with Bannock, she fights down her feelings and rushes off with the papers to Sargall. When she turns them over to him it is found the papers are blank. Bannock had concealed the real papers under the carpet in his room. Realizing that his wife will be the object of Sargall's wrath, when he finds the papers are blank, Bannock follows her and is on the balcony outside of Sargall's room when the blank papers are delivered. Sargall gives Olga the alternative of suffering the penalty of a spy or submitting to his love. Bannock leaps through the window and overpowers Sargall. Olga throws herself into her husband's arms and says she will flee with him. At the point of a revolver Bannock forces Sargall to accompany them in an automobile and pass them by the guards until they are out of the country. He then forces him out of the machine and to walk back, while Olga and he flee on to safety.