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Came, into view under the flash a pair of gloves, a box of matches, a silk handkerchief, a card-case. The agent said nothing, but passed a card to the Chancellor, who read it without comment. There was silence in the car. At last the Chancellor stirred. "This man he took your car on?" "Yes. And he has not returned. No other machine has passed." The secret-service men exchanged glances.
There was another civilian, a member of the German secret-service staff, wearing the Norfolk jacket and the green Alpine hat and on a cord about his neck the big gold token of authority which invariably mark a representative of this branch of the German espionage bureau; and he was wearing likewise that transparent air of mystery which seemed always to go with the followers of his ingenious profession.
The next thing Abbot sees is that the man is at her side; that he has accosted her; that she is startled and annoyed; and that although in totally different garb, her caller is no less a person than the secret-service official who visited him that morning. What on earth can that mean? Whatever the conversation, it is very brief.
What his presence there might forbode, what his apparent recognition of me might portend, we could not conjecture. We agreed that, although both of us had been on the lookout for Imperial emissaries all the way from Placentia, and alertly watching from Ariminum southwards, this was the first time we had set eyes on any man whom we could take for a secret-service man.
I could feel my face flushing, my hands clenching as I caught his drift. I swung round. "What's this about?" I demanded sharply. But I knew. "Well," said the secret-service man discreetly, "I saw something pretty funny the first night out, Mr. Bayne. It was safe enough with me; I can tell a gentleman from a spy; but if an officer had seen it, the thing wouldn't have been a joke.
And yet so skilfully had he phrased his utterances, so craftily had he injected the hot poison, so deftly had he avoided counselling outright disobedience to the law, that sundry secret-service men who had been detailed to attend the meeting and to arrest the speaker, United States representative though he be, in case he preached a single sentence of what might be interpreted as open treason, were completely circumvented.
The French, as you know, have not imitated our blind credulity. Their frontier would seem to be impregnable, and the difficulties of invading England, even from the air, are very much as they were during the last war. It was these considerations which made my uncle persevere in his attempt at secret-service work on the Continent.
The two secret-service agents took turns on chairs outside their prisoner's door, glancing in occasionally to see that he still slept in his built-in bed. At a little before five the man outside the prisoner's door heard something inside the room. He glanced in. All was quiet. The prisoner slept heavily, genuine sleep.
Some of us my uncle was one who have studied history and who know something of the science of international politics, realise perfectly well that no Empire can be considered secure under such conditions. This country swarms with foreign secret-service men. What they are planning against us, Heaven knows!" "Heaven and Naida Karetsky," Chalmers intervened softly.
Neither, I patriotically assumed, were the men of my country's secret-service, however humble their part as cogs in that great machinery, or however distasteful Mr. Van Blarcom, personally, might be to me. And finally, I could not deny that women, clever, well-born, and beautiful, had served as spies a thousand times in the world's history, urged to it by some sense of duty, some tie of blood.
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