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For some days past, the attention of the public had been so distracted by various other events that for the time being the spy was forgotten. On arriving at Salonica, he made discreet inquiries among his military and marine friends in the harbor cafés. Hardly any one had ever heard the name of Freya Talberg. Those who had read it in the newspapers merely replied with indifference.
He protested in advance with a ferocious incredulity. "Lies!... new lies! I wonder when you will ever stop your inventions!" "I am not a German woman," she continued without listening to him. "Neither is my name Freya Talberg.... It is my nombre de guerre, my name as an adventuress.
The porter, as though foreseeing the chance of getting an easy fee from his client, took it upon himself to select a room for him, an apartment on a floor lower than on his former stay, near that which the signora Talberg was occupying. They met in mid-afternoon in the Villa Nazionale, and began their walk together through the streets of Chiaja.
The approach of Ulysses made him spring up as though he heard the rustling of paper money. His information was very precise. The signora Talberg very seldom ate at the hotel. She had some friends who were occupying a furnished flat in the district of Chiaja, with whom she usually passed almost the entire day.
But he had scarcely run his eyes over some of the sheets before he stopped his reading. He had come across the name of Freya Talberg. This lawyer had been her defender before the Council of War. Ferragut hastened to put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience.
Doubt was impossible: it was very clear, Freya Talberg. He took the paper from his comrade's hand, disguising his impatience by an assumption of curiosity. "What is the war news to-day?..." And while the old sailor was giving him the news, he read feverishly the few lines grouped beneath that name. He was bewildered.
The first evening that he met his old comrade, the captain, in the café of the Cannebière, he skillfully guided the conversation around until he could bring out naturally the question in the back of his mind: "What was the fate of that Freya Talberg that there was so much talk about in the newspapers before I went to Salonica?..." The Marseillaise had to make an effort to recall her.
Talberg was the professor who accompanied me to the Andes, and who was not my husband, either.... My true name is Beatrice.... My mother was an Italian, a Florentine; my father was from Trieste." This revelation did not interest Ferragut. "One fraud more!" he said. "Another novel!... Keep on making them up." The woman was in despair.
These spies were so numerous!... The newspapers were constantly publishing notices of their shooting: two lines, no more, as though treating of an ordinary casualty. "This Freya Talberg," he continued, "has had enough said about her personality. It seems that she is a chic woman, a species of lady from a novel. Many are protesting because she has not yet been executed.
Through his "distinguished friend, Madame Talberg," he had heard of many of Ferragut's nautical adventures. Men of action, the heroes of the ocean, were always exceedingly interesting to him. Ulysses suddenly noticed in his noble interlocutor a warm affection, a desire to make himself agreeable, just like the doctor's.
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