In sheer desperation I achieved a ghastly levity of demeanor.
“Please don’t shoot me yet,” I managed to request. “And if I sit down and think for a moment, don’t take it for a confession. Any innocent man would be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up such loot.”
I sat down in dizzy fashion, my judges watching me. Through my mind, in a mad phantasmagoria, danced the series of events that had begun in the St. Ives restaurant and was ending so dramatically in the salon of this ship. Or perhaps the end had not yet arrived, I thought ironically. By a slight effort of imagination I could conjure up a scene of the sort rendered familiar by countless movie dramas—a lowering fortress wall, myself standing against it, scornfully waving away a bandage, and drawn up before me a highly efficient firing-squad.
To all intents and purposes I was a spy, caught red-handed; but with due respect for circumstantial evidence, I did not mean to remain one long. That part of it was too absurd. There must be a dozen ways out of it. Come! The fact that so strange an experience had befallen me in a New York hotel on the eve of my sailing could not be pure coincidence. There lay the clue to the mystery. Let me work it out.
And then, as my wits began groping, comprehension came to me—a sudden comprehension that left me stunned and dazed: The open trunk, the thief, the descent by the fire-escape, the girl’s calm denial, turning us from the suspected floor. Yes, the girl! Heavens, what a blind dolt I had been! No wonder that Van Blarcom had felt moved to say a helping word for me, as for a congenital idiot not responsible for his acts!
“When you are ready—” the lieutenant was remarking. I pulled myself together as hastily as I could.
“First,” I began, with all the resolution I could muster, “I want to say that I am as much at a loss as you are about this thing. I never set eyes upon those papers until this evening. Why, man alive, I insisted on the search! I asked you to examine the wallet! Do you think I did all that to establish my own guilt?”
“We’ll keep to the point, please.” His very politeness was ill omened. “The papers were in your baggage. Can you explain how they came there?”
“I am going to try,” I answered coolly. “To begin with, I can vouch for it that they were not there two weeks ago when my man packed the trunk. That I can swear to, for I glanced through the letters before handing him the wallet; and when he had finished packing I locked the trunk and went yachting for five days.”
“And your luggage? Did it go with you?” queried the Englishman.
“No; it didn’t. It remained in the baggage-room of my apartment house; but when I landed and found hotel quarters, I had it sent to me at the St. Ives.”
“So you stayed there!” He was eyeing me with ever-growing disfavor. “You didn’t know, of course, that it was a nest of agents, a sort of rendezvous for hyphenates, and that the last spy we caught on this line had made it his headquarters in New York?”
“I did not,” I replied stiffly. “But I can believe the worst of it. Now, here’s what befell me there.” I recounted my adventure briefly, beginning with the summons from restaurant to telephone.
It was strange how, as I talked, each detail fell into its place, how each little circumstance, formerly so mystifying, grew clear. The alarm of themaitre d’hotelover my sudden departure, his relief when I entered the booths, his corresponding horror when, emerging, I took the elevator for my room, puzzled me no longer. The deserted halls, the flight of the little German intruder, the determined lack of interest of the hotel management, were merely links in the chain.
I told a straight, unvarnished story with one exception. When I came to the point I couldn’t bring in Miss Esme Falconer’s name. I said non-committally that a lady had occupied the room where the thief took refuge; and I left it to be inferred that I had never seen her before or since.
The lieutenant heard my tale out with impassivity. “Is that all, Mr. Bayne?” he asked shortly, as I paused.
“Yes,” I lied doggedly. “And if you want more, I call you insatiable. I’ve told you enough to satisfy any man’s appetite for the abnormal, haven’t I?”
“Your defense, then,” he summed it up, “is that under the protection of a German management a German agent entered your room, opened your trunk, concealed these papers in it, and repacked it. You believe that, eh?”
It sounded wild enough, I acknowledged gloomily as I sat staring at the carpet with my elbows on my knees.
“You’ve been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!” the refrain sang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode, more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myself by my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrant confederate of a clever spy?
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Oh, what’s the use?” I muttered. “No, of course I don’t believe it, and you won’t either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might as well suggest that if the thief hadn’t been gone when they arrived, the manager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctor drugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let’s end all this! I’m ready to go ashore if you want to take me. In your place I know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on general principles I should order the man who told it shot.”
“Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne,” was the cool response of the Englishman. “The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at German spies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it’s hysteria. But by and by you’ll change your minds, as we did, and know the German secret service for what it is—the most competent thing, the most widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the world has to fight to-day.”
“You don’t mean,” I inquired blankly, “that you believe me?”
It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to be accepted; but then, as a general thing I don’t suddenly discover that I have been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.
“I mean,” he corrected with truly British phlegm, “that I can’t say positively your story is untrue. Here’s the case: Some one—probably Franz von Blenheim—wants to send these papers home by way of Italy and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail for Naples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it’s ten to one that nobody will suspect you and that your baggage will go through untouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet. Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, or candles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private code and reads that you are coming and that he is to shadow you and learn where you are stopping and loot your trunk the first night you spend ashore!”
“I don’t grasp,” I commented dazedly; “why they should weave such circles. Why not let one of their own agents bring over the papers?”
The lieutenant smiled a faint, cold, wintry smile.
“Spies,” he informed me, “always think they are watched, and generally they’re not wrong in thinking so. If they can send their documents by an innocent person, they had better. For my part, I call it a very clever scheme.”
“I believe I am dreaming,” I muttered. “Somebody ought to pinch me. You found those infernal things nestling among my coats and hose and trousers—and you don’t think I put them there?”
“I didn’t say that,” he denied as unresponsively as a brazen Vishnu. “I simply say that I wouldn’t care to order you shot as things stand now. But you’ll remember that I have only your word that all this happened or that you are really an American or even that this passport is yours and that your name is—ah—Devereux Bayne. We’ll have to know quite a bit more before we call this thing settled. How are you going to satisfy his Majesty the King?”
I plucked up spirit.
“Well,” I suggested, “how will this suit you? I’ll go down to my stateroom and stop there until we land in Italy; and, if you like, just to be on the safe side with such a desperado as I am, you can put a guard outside my door. But first, you’ll send a sheaf of marconigrams for me in both directions. You’re welcome to read them, of course, before they go. Then when we get to Naples, my friend, Mr. Herriott, will meet the steamer. He is second secretary at the United States embassy, and his identification will be sufficient, I suppose. Anyhow, if it isn’t, I dare say the ambassador will say a word for me. I have known him for years, though not so well.”
“That would be quite sufficient as to identification.” He stressed the last word significantly, and I thanked heaven for Dunny and the forces which I knew that rather important old personage could set to work.
“Also,” I continued coolly, “there will be various cablegrams from United States officials awaiting us, which will convince you, I hope, that I am not likely to be a spy. There will be a statement from the friend who dined with me at the St. Ives. There will be the declaration of the policeman who saw the German climb down the fire-escape and bolt into the room beneath.” “And hang the expense!” I added inwardly, computing cable rates, but assuming a lordly indifference to them which only a multimillionaire could really feel.
The Englishman and the captain consulted a moment. Then the former spoke:
“That will be satisfactory, sir, to Captain Cecchi and to me. Write out your cables, if you please. They shall be sent. And I say, Mr. Bayne,—I hope you drive that ambulance. I’m not stationed here to be a partizan, but you’ve stood up to us like a man.”
An hour later as I finished my solitary dinner, the electric lights flickered and died, and the engines began their throb. Under cover of the darkness we were slipping out of Gibraltar. I leaned my arms on the table and scanned the remains of my feast by the light of my one sad candle, not thinking of what I saw, or of the various calls for help I had been dispatching, or of the sailor grimly mounting guard outside my door. I was remembering a girl, a girl with ruddy hair and a wild-rose flush and great, gray, starry eyes, a girl that by all the rules of the game I should have handed over to those who represented the countries she was duping, a girl that I had found I had to shield when I came face to face with the issue.
The Turin-Paris express—the most direct, the Italians call it—was too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for solitude. With great trouble and pains I had ferreted out a single vacant compartment; but as four o’clock sounded and the whistle blew for departure, a belated traveler joined me—worse still, an acquaintance who could not be quite ignored.
The unwelcome intruder was Mr. John Van Blarcom, my late fellow-voyager, and he accepted the encounter with a better grace than I.
“Why, hello!” he greeted me cheerfully. “Going through to France? Glad to see you—but you’re about the last man that I was looking for. I got the idea somehow you were planning to stop a while in Rome.”
I returned his nod with a curtness I was at no pains to dissemble. Then I reproached myself, for it was undeniable that on theRe d’Italiahe had more than once stood my friend. He had offered me a timely warning, which I had flouted; he had obligingly confirmed my statement in my grueling third degree. Yet despite this, or because of it, I didn’t like him; nor did I like his patronizing, complacent manner, which seemed fairly to shriek at me, “I told you so!”
“Changed my plans,” I acknowledged with a lack of cordiality that failed to ruffle him. He had hung up his overcoat and installed himself facing me, and was now making preparations for lighting a fat cigar.
“Well,” he commented, with a chuckle of raillery, after this operation, “the last time I saw you you were in a pretty tight corner, eh? You can’t say it was my fault, either; I’d have put you wise if you’d listened. But you weren’t taking any—you knew better than I did—and you strafed me, as the Dutchies say, to the kaiser’s taste.”
“Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe,” was my grumpy comment, which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large, fine, generous gesture to blow away.
“That’s all right,” he declared. “I’m not holding it against you. We’ve all got to learn. Next time you won’t be so easy caught, I guess. It makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!”
“On the contrary,” I differed shortly,—I wasn’t hunting sympathy,—“considering all the circumstances, I think they were extremely fair.”
“Not to shoot you on sight? Well, maybe.” He was grinning. “But I guess you weren’t hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin that measured six feet by five.”
“It had advantages. One of them was solitude,” I responded dryly. “And it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave. See here, I don’t enjoy this subject! Suppose we drop it. The fact is, I’ve never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn’t owe me any civility, you know, and you had to—well—we’ll say draw on your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that night.”
“Sure, I lied like a trooper,” he admitted placidly. “Glad to do it. You didn’t break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for you. It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!”
Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried myself in the Paris “Herald,” but found I could not read. Simmering with wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the man by the collar, and hurl him far away.
Glancing out at the landscape, I saw that Turin lay back of us and that our track was winding through dark chestnut forests toward the heights. Confound Van Blarcom’s reminiscences and the thoughts they had set stirring! In ambush behind my paper I gloomily relived the past.
Our ship, following sealed instructions, had changed her course at Gibraltar, conveying us by way of the Spanish coast to Genoa instead of Naples. From my port-hole I had gazed glumly on blue skies and bright, blue waters, purple hills, and white-walled cities, and fishing boats with patched, gaudy sails and dark-complexioned crews. Then Genoa rose from the sea, tier after tier of pink and green and orange houses and shimmering groves of olive trees; and I was summoned to the salon, to face the captain of the port, the chief of the police of the city, and their bedizened suites.
Surrounded by plumes and swords and gold lace, I maintained my innocence and heard Jack Herriott, on his opportune arrival, pour forth in weird, but fluent, Italian an account of me that must have surrounded me in the eyes of all present with a golden halo, and that firmly established me in their minds as the probable next President of the United States. Thanks to these exaggerations and to various confirmatory cablegrams—Dunny had plainly set the wires humming on receiving my S.O.S.,—I found myself a free man, at price of putting my signature to a statement of it all. I shook the hand of the ever non-committal Captain Cecchi, and left the ship. And an hour after good old Jack was gazing at me in wrath unconcealed as I informed him that I was in the mood for neither gadding, nor social intercourse, and had made up my mind to proceed immediately to duty at the Front.
“You’ve been seasick; that’s what ails you,” he said, diagnosing my condition. “Oh, I don’t expect you to admit it—no man ever did that. But you wait and see how you feel when we’ve had a few meals at the Grand Hotel in Rome!”
This culinary bait leaving me cold, he lost his temper, expressed a hope that the Germans would blow my ambulance to smithereens, and assured me that the next time I brought the Huns’ papers across the ocean I might extricate myself without his assistance from what might ensue. However, though he has a bark, Jack possesses no bite worth mentioning. He even saw me off when I left by the north-bound train.
Leaning moodily forward, I looked again from the window and wished I might hurry the creaking, grinding revolution of the wheels. We were climbing higher and higher among the mountains. The chestnuts, growing scanter, were replaced by dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers; and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of the frontier towns.
I was speeding toward France; but where was the girl of theRe d’Italia? To what dubious rendezvous, what haunt of spies, had she hurried, once ashore? The thought of her stung my vanity almost beyond endurance. She had pleaded with me that night, swayed against me trustingly, appealed to me as to a chivalrous gentleman and, having competently pulled the wool over my eyes, had laughed at me in her sleeve.
I had held myself a canny fellow, not an easy prey to adventurers; a fairly decent one, too, who didn’t lie to a king’s officer or help treasonable plots. Yet had I not done just those things by my silence on the steamer? And for what reason? Upon my soul I didn’t know, unless because she had gray eyes.
“Hang it all!” I exclaimed, flinging my unlucky paper into a corner, and becoming aware too late that Van Blarcom was observing me with a grin.
“I’ve got the black butterflies, as the French say,” I explained savagely. “This mountain travel is maddening; one might as well be a snail.”
“Sure, a slow train’s tiresome,” agreed Van Blarcom. “Specially if you’re not feeling overpleased with life anyway,” he added, with a knowing smile.
An angry answer rose to my lips, but the Mont Cenis tunnel opportunely enveloped us, and in the dark half-hour transit that followed I regained my self-control. It was not worth while, I decided, to quarrel with the fellow, to break his head or to give him the chance of breaking mine. After all, I thought low-spiritedly, what right had I to look down on him? We were pot and kettle, indistinguishably black. It was true that he had perjured himself upon the liner; but so, in spirit if not in words, had I!
Thus reflecting, I saw the train emerge from the tunnel, felt it jar to a standstill in the station of Modane, and, in obedience to staccato French outcries on the platform, alighted in the frontier town. Followed by Van Blarcom and preceded by our porters, I strolled in leisurely fashion towards the customs shed. The air was clear, chilly, invigorating; snowy peaks were thick and near. And the scene was picturesque, dotted as it was with mounted bayonets and blue territorial uniforms—reminders that boundary lines were no longer jests and that strangers might not enter France unchallenged in time of war.
Van Blarcom’s elbow at this juncture nudged me sharply.
“Say, Mr. Bayne,” he was whispering, “look over there, will you? What do you know about that?”
I looked indifferently. Then blank dismay took possession of me. Across the shed, just visible between rows of trunks piled mountain high, stood Miss Esme Falconer, as usual only too well worth seeing from fur hat to modish shoe.
“Ain’t that the limit,” commented the grinning Van Blarcom; “us three turning up again, all together like this? Well, I guess she won’t have to call a policeman to stop you talking to her. You know enough this time to steer pretty clear of her. Isn’t that so?”
But I had wheeled upon him; the coincidence was too striking!
“Look here!” I demanded, “are you following that young lady? Is that your business on this side?”
“No!” he denied disgustedly, retreating a step. “Never saw her from the time we docked till this minute; never wanted to see her! Anyhow, what’s the glare for? Suppose I was?”
“It’s rather strange, you’ll admit.” I was regarding him fixedly. “You seemed to have a good deal of information about her on the ship. Yet when that affair occurred at Gibraltar, you were as dumb as an oyster. Why didn’t you tell the captain and the English officers the things you knew?”
“Well, I had my reasons,” he replied defiantly. “And at that, I don’t see as you’ve got anything on me, Mr. Bayne. You’re no fool. You put two and two together quick enough to know darned well who planted those papers in your baggage; so if you thought it needed telling, why didn’t you tell it yourself?”
“I don’t know who put them there,” I denied hastily, “except that he was a pale little runt of a German, pretending to be a thief, who will wish he had died young if I ever see him again.”
An inspector had just passed my traps through with bored indifference. I turned a huffy back on Van Blarcom and went to stand in line before a door which harbored, I was told, a special commission for the examination of passports and the admission of travelers into France.
Reaching the inner room in due course, I saluted three uniformed men who sat round an unimposing wooden table, exhibited thevisethat Jack Herriott had secured for me at Genoa, and was welcomed to the land. Then I stepped forth on the platform, retrieved my porter and my baggage, and placed myself near the door to wait until the girl should come.
I must have been a grim sort of sentinel as I stood there watching. I knew what I had to do, but I detested it with all my heart. There was one thing to be said for this Miss Falconer—she had courage. She was pressing on to French soil without lingering a day in Italy, though she must be aware that by so swift a move she was risking suspicion, discovery, death.
As moment after moment dragged past, I grew uneasy. Would she come out at all? Could she win past those trained, keen-eyed men? The more I thought of it, the more desperate seemed the game she was playing. This little Alpine town, high among the peaks, surrounded by pines and snow, had been a setting for tragedies since the war began. These territorials with their muskets were not mere supers, either. But no! She was emerging; she was starting toward therapide. There, no doubt, a reserved compartment was awaiting her, and once inside its shelter, she would not appear again.
I drew a deep breath in which resolve and distaste were mingled. She had crossed the frontier, but she was not in Paris yet. I couldn’t shirk the thing twice, knowing as I did her charm, her beauty, her air of proud, spirited graciousness—all the tools that equipped her. I couldn’t, if I was ever again to hold my head before a Frenchman, let her pass on, so daring and dangerous and resourceful, to do her work in France.
As she approached, I stepped in front of her, lifting my hat.
“This is a great surprise, Miss Falconer,” said I.
I was prepared for fear, for distress, for pleading as I confronted Miss Falconer; the one thing I hadn’t expected was that she should seem pleased at the meeting, but she did. She flushed a little, smiled brightly, and held out her gloved hand to me.
“Why, Mr. Bayne! I am so glad!” she exclaimed in frankly cordial tones.
The crass coolness of her tactics, with its implied rating of my intelligence, was the very bracer I needed for a most unpleasant task. I accepted her hand, bowed over it formally, and released it. Then I spoke with the most impersonal courtesy in the world.
“And I,” I declared coolly, “am delighted, I assure you. It is great luck meeting you like this; and I will not let you slip away. I suppose that when we board the train they will serve us a meal of some sort. Won’t you give me the pleasure of having you for my guest?”
The brightness had left her face as she sensed my attitude. She drew back, regarding me in a rebuffed, bewildered way.
“Thank you, no. I am not hungry.”
By Jove, but she was an actress! I should have sworn I had hurt her if I hadn’t known the truth.
“Don’t say that!” I protested. “Of course it is unconventional to dine with a stranger; but then so is almost everything that is happening to you and me. Think of those lord high executioners in there round the table. See this platform with its guards and bayonets and guns. And then remember our odd experiences on theRe d’Italia. Won’t you risk one more informality and come and dine?”
She hesitated a moment, watching me steadily; then, with proud reluctance, she walked beside me toward the train.
“You helped me once,” she said, her eyes averted now, “and I haven’t forgotten. I don’t understand at all,—but I shall do as you say.”
The passengers were being herded aboard by eager, bustling officials. I saw my baggage and the girl’s installed, disposed of the porters, and guided my companion to thewagonrestaurant. The horn was sounding as we entered, and at six-thirty promptly, just as I put Miss Falconer in her chair, we pulled out of the snowy station of Modane.
As I studied the menu, the girl sat with lowered lashes, all things about her, from her darkened eyes and high head to her pallor, proclaiming her feeling of offense, her sense of hurt. She knew her game, I admitted, and she had first-class weapons. Though she could not weaken my resolution, she made my beginning hard.
“We are going to have a discouraging meal,” I gossiped procrastinatingly. “But, since we are in France, it will be a little less horrible than the usual dining-car. The wine is probably hopeless; I suggest Evian or Vichy. These radishes look promising. Will you have some?”
“No. I am not hungry,” she repeated briefly. “Won’t you please tell me what you have to say?”
Though I didn’t in the least want them, I ate a few of the radishes just to show that I was not abashed by her haughty, reproachful air. Other passengers were strolling in. Here was Mr. John Van Blarcom, who, at the sight of Miss Falconer and myself to all appearances cozily established for a tete-a-tete meal, stopped in his tracks and fastened on me the hard, appraising scrutiny that a policeman might turn on a hitherto respectable acquaintance discovered in converse with some notorious crook. For an instant he seemed disposed to buttonhole me and remonstrate. Then he shrugged his stocky shoulders, the gesture indicating that one can’t save a fool from his folly, and established himself at a near-by table, from which coign of vantage he kept us under steady watch.
Given such an audience, my outward mien must be impeccable.
“There is something,” I admitted cautiously, “that I want to say to you. But I wish you would eat something first. People are watching us,” I added beneath my breath as the soup appeared.
She took a sip under protest, and then replaced her spoon and sat with fingers twisting her gloves and eyes fixed smolderingly on mine. I shifted furtively in my seat. This was a charming experience. I was being, from my point of view, almost quixotically generous; yet with one glance she could make me feel like a bully and a brute.
“I am sure,” I stumbled, fumbling desperately with my serviette, “that you came over without realizing what war conditions are. Strangers aren’t wanted just now. Travel is dangerous for women. You may think me all kinds of a presumptuous idiot,—I shan’t blame you,—but I am going to urge you most strongly to go home.”
Whatever she had looked for, obviously it was not that.
“Mr. Bayne,” she exclaimed, regarding me wonderingly, “what do you mean?”
“Just this, Miss Falconer,” I answered with almost Teutonic ruthlessness. Confound it! I couldn’t sit here forever bullying her; sheer desperation lent me strength. “TheEspagnesails from Bordeaux on Saturday, I see by the Herald, and if I were you, I should most certainly be on board. In fact, if you lose the chance, I am sure you’ll regret it later. The French police authorities are—er—very inquisitive about foreigners; and if you stop in France in these anxious times, I think it likely that they may—well—”
She drew a quick, hard breath as I trailed off into silence. Her eyes, darkened, horrified, were gazing full into mine.
“You wouldn’t tell them about me! You couldn’t be so cruel!” The words came almost fiercely, yet with a sound like a stifled sob.
By its sheer preposterousness the speech left me dumb a moment, and then gave me back the self-possession I had been clutching at throughout the meal. For the first time since entering I sat erect and squared my shoulders. I even confronted her with a rather glittering smile.
“I am very sorry,” I said, with a cool stare, “if I appear so; but I am consideration itself compared with the people you would meet in Paris, say. That’s the very point I’m making—that you can’t travel now in comfort. I’m simply trying to spare you future contretemps, Miss Falconer; such as I had on theRe d’Italia, you may recall.”
She leaned impulsively across the table.
“Oh, Mr. Bayne, I knew it! You are angry about that wretched extra, and you have a right to be. Of course you thought it cowardly of me—yes, and ungrateful—to stand there without a word and let those officers question you. Mr. Bayne, if the worst had come to the worst, I should have spoken, I should, indeed; but I had to wait. I had to give myself every chance. It meant so much, so much! You had nothing to hide from them. You were certain to win through. And then, you seemed so undisturbed, so unruffled, so able to take care of yourself; I knew you were not afraid. It was different with me. If they began to suspect, if they learned who I was, I could never have entered France. This route through Italy was my one hope! I am so sorry. But still—”
Hitherto she had been appealing; but now she defied frankly. That tint of hers, like nothing but a wild rose, drove away her pallor; her gray eyes flamed.
“But still,” she flashed at me, “you won’t inform on me just for that? I asked you to help me; you were free to refuse—and you agreed! Because it inconvenienced you a little, are you going to turn police agent?” Her red lips twisted proudly, scornfully. “I don’t believe it, Mr. Bayne!”
I laughed shortly. She was indeed an artist.
“I wasn’t thinking of that particular episode—” I began.
“But you did resent it. I saw it when you first joined me. And I was so glad to see you—to have the chance of thanking you!” she broke in, smoldering still.
“No, I didn’t resent it. I didn’t even blame you. If I blamed any one, Miss Falconer, it would certainly be myself. I’ve concluded I ought not to go about without a keeper. My gullibility must have amused you tremendously.” I laughed.
“I never thought you gullible,” she denied, suddenly wistful. “I thought you very generous and very chivalrous, Mr. Bayne.”
This was carrying mockery too far.
“I am afraid,” I said meaningly, “that the authorities at Gibraltar would take a less flattering view. For instance, if those Englishmen learned that I had refrained from telling them of our meeting at the St. Ives, I should hear from them, I fancy.”
Again her eyes were widening. What attractive eyes she had!
“The St. Ives?” she repeated wonderingly. “Why should that interest them? What do you mean?” Then, suddenly, she bent forward, propped her elbows on the table, and amazed me with a slow, astonished, comprehending smile. “I see!” she murmured, studying me intently. “You thought that I screened the man who hid those papers, that I crossed the ocean on—similar business, perhaps even that on this side I was to take the documents from your trunk?”
“Naturally,” I rejoined stiffly. “And I congratulate you. It was a brilliant piece of work; though, as its victim, I fail to see it in the rosiest light.”
“I understand,” she went on, still smiling faintly. “You thought I was—well—Look over yonder.”
Her glance, seeking the opposite wall unostentatiously, directed my attention to a black-lettered, conspicuously posted sign:
BE SILENT! BE MISTRUSTFUL! THE EARS OF THE ENEMY ARE LISTENING!
Thus it shouted its warning, like the thousands of its kind that are scattered about the trains, the boats, the railroad stations, and all the public places of France.
“You thought I was the ears of the enemy, didn’t you?” the girl was asking. “You thought I was a German agent. I might have guessed! Well, in that case it was kind of you not to hand me over to the Modane gendarmes. I ought to thank you. But I wasn’t so suspicious when they searched your trunk and found the papers—I simply felt that they must be crazy to think you could be a spy.”
I achieved a shrug of my shoulders, a polite air of incredulity; but, to tell the truth, I was a little less skeptical than I appeared. There was something in her manner that by no means suggested pretense. And she had said a true word about the occurrences on theRe d’Italia. If appearances meant facts, I myself had been proved guilty up to the hilt.
“Mr. Bayne,” she was saying soberly, “I should like you to believe me—please! I am an American, and I have had cause lately to hate the Germans; all my bonds are with our own country and with France. There is some one very dear to me to whom this war has worked a cruel injustice. I have come to try to help that person; and for certain reasons—I can’t explain them—I had to come in secret or not at all. But I have done nothing wrong, nothing dishonorable. And so”—again her eyes challenged me—“I shall not sail from Bordeaux on theEspagneon Saturday; and you shall choose for yourself whether you will speak of me to the French police.”
It was not much of an argument, regarded dispassionately; yet it shook me. With sudden craftiness I resolved to trap her if I could.
“I ought to tell them on the mere chance that they would send you home,” I grumbled irritably. “You have no business here, you know, helping people and being suspected and pursued and outrageously annoyed by fools like me. Yes, and by other fools—and worse,” I added with feigned sulphurousness, indicated Van Blarcom. “Miss Falconer, would you mind glancing at the third man on the right—the dark man who is staring at us—and telling me whether or not you ever saw him before you sailed?”
“I am sure I never did,” she declared, knitting puzzled brows; “and yet on theRe d’Italiahe insisted that we had met. It frightened me a little. I wondered whether or not he suspected something. And every time I see him he watches me in that same way.”
I was thawing, despite myself.
“There’s one other thing,” I ventured, “if you won’t think me too impertinent: Did you ever hear of a man named Franz von Blenheim?”
“No,” she said blankly; “I never did. Who is he?”
No birds out of that covert! If this was acting it was marvelous; there had not been the slightest flicker of confusion in her face.
“Oh, he isn’t anybody of importance—just a man,” I evaded. “Look here, Miss Falconer, you’ll have to forgive me if you can. You shall stay in Paris, and I’ll be as silent as the grave concerning you; but I’d like to do more than that. Won’t you let me come and call? Really, you know, I’m not such a duffer as you have cause to think me. After we got acquainted you might be willing to trust me with this business, whatever it is. And then, if it’s not too desperate, I have friends who could be of help to you.” Such was the sop I threw to conscience, the bargain I struck between sober reason and the instinct that made me trust her against all odds. My theories must have been moonshine. Everything was all right, probably. But for the sake of prudence I ought to keep track of her. Besides, I wanted to.
Gratitude and consternation, a most becoming mixture, were in her eyes. She drew back a little.
“Oh, thank you, but that’s impossible,” she said uncertainly. “I have friends, too; but they can’t help me. Nobody can.”
“Well,” I admitted sadly, “I know the rudiments of manners. I can recognize a conge, but consider me a persistent boor. Come, Miss Falconer, why mayn’t I call? Because we are strangers? If that’s it, you can assure yourself at the embassy that I am perfectly respectable; and you see I don’t eat with my knife or tuck my napkin under my chin or spill my soup.”
Again that warm flush.
“Mr. Bayne!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Did I need an introduction to speak to you on the ship, to ask unreasonable favors of you, to make people think you a spy? If you are going to imagine such absurd things, I shall have to—”
“To consent? I hoped you might see it that way.”
“Of course,” she pondered aloud, “I may find good news waiting. If I do, it will change everything. I could see you once, at least, and let you know. I really owe you that, I think, when you’ve been so kind to me.”
“Yes,” I agreed bitterly, with a pang of conscience, “I’ve been very kind—particularly to-night!”
“Well, perhaps to-night you were just a little difficult.” She was smiling, but I didn’t mind; I rather liked her mockery now. “Still, even when you thought the worst of me, Mr. Bayne, you kept my secret. And—do you really wish to come to see me?”
“I most emphatically do.”
She drew a card from her beaded bag, rummaged vainly for a pencil, ended by accepting mine, and scribbled a brief address.
“Then,” she commanded, handing me the bit of pasteboard, “come to this number at noon to-morrow and ask for me. And now, since I’m not to go to prison, Mr. Bayne, I believe I am hungry. This is war bread, I suppose; but it tastes delicious. And isn’t the saltless butter nice?”
“And here are the chicken and the salad arriving!” I exclaimed hopefully. “And there never was a French cook yet, however unspeakable otherwise, who failed at those.”
What had come to pass I could not have told; but we were eating celestial viands, and my black butterflies having fled away, a swarm of their gorgeous-tinted kindred were fluttering radiantly over Miss Esme Falconer’s plate and mine.