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Do you think I'm quite a fool, Lord Southbourne?" He looked amused, and blew another ring before he answered, enigmatically: "David said in his haste 'all men are liars. If he'd said at his leisure 'all men are fools, when there's a woman in the case' he'd have been nearer the mark!" "What do you mean?" I demanded, hotly enough.
Some one grasped my right arm just where the bandage was, though he didn't know that and hurt me so badly that I started up involuntarily, to find Sir George and Southbourne just in front of the dock holding out their hands to me, and I heard a voice somewhere near. "Come along, sir, this way; you can follow to the ante-room, gentlemen; can't have a demonstration in Court."
I wondered how he knew that, but he wouldn't tell me." "He has never told me," Southbourne said complacently. "Though I guessed it, all the same, and he couldn't deny it, when I asked him. She dropped hairpins about, or a hairpin rather, women always do when they're agitated, an expensive gilt hairpin. That's how he knew she was certainly fair-haired, and probably well dressed."
"The police declare it to be the symbol of a formidable secret organization which they have hitherto failed to crush; one that has ramifications throughout the world," Southbourne continued. "Why, man, what's wrong with you?" he added hastily. I suppose I must have looked ghastly; but I managed to steady my voice, and answer curtly: "I'll tell you later. Go on, what about Carson?"
"Lord Southbourne? Just so; he knows a thing or two. Well, now about Cassavetti " I was glad enough to get back to the point; it was he and not I who had strayed from it, for I was anxious to get rid of him. I gave him just the information I had decided upon, and flattered myself that I did it with a candor that precluded even him from suspecting that I was keeping anything back.
I knew she was in London, and in danger of her life; and I knew of no one whom I could summon to her aid, as Carson would have wished, except Lord Southbourne, and I only knew him as my friend's chief." "But you never said a word of all this in the note you sent to Southbourne with the photograph. I know, for he showed it me."
Anne might be dead, or in a Russian prison, which was worse than death; at any rate nearly two thousand miles of sea and land separated us, and I was powerless to aid her, as powerless as I had been while I lay in the prison of Peter and Paul. But there was one thing I could still do; I could guard her name, her fame. It would have been a desecration to mention her to this man Southbourne.
I thought of Carson as I last saw him, the day before I started for South Africa, when we dined together and made a night of it. If I had been available when the situation became acute in Russia a few weeks later, Southbourne would have sent me instead of him; I should perhaps have met with his fate.
Where's the time-table?" Mary objected, of course, on the score that I was not yet strong enough for work, and I reassured her. "Nonsense, dear; I'm all right, and I've been idle too long." "Idle! When you've turned out that Russian series." "A month ago, and I haven't done a stroke since." "But is this anything special?" she urged. "Lord Southbourne is not sending you abroad again, to Russia?"
He looked up, nodded to me, indicated a chair, and a table on which were whiskey and soda and an open box of cigarettes, and invited me to help myself, all with one sweep of the hand, and without an instant's interruption of his discourse, an impassioned denunciation of some British statesman who dared to differ from him Southbourne on some burning question of the day, Tariff Reform, I think; but I did not listen.
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