We had for months been working on without publicity, unheeded, unrecognised, unprotected, unknown. A thankless though dangerous task, our only reward had been a kind word from the silent, sad-faced Prime Minister himself. For months our whereabouts had been unknown, even to each other. Ray generally scented the presence of spies, and it was for me to carry through the inquiry in the manner which I considered best and safest for myself.
"Suzette," I said at length, looking at her across the rising smoke from my cigarette, "when we last met you had the advantage of me. To-day we stand upon even ground."
"Pardon! I don't quite understand?" asked the little lady in the sheath costume with just a slight tremor of the eyelids.
"Well--I have discovered that you and Henry Banfield are friends--that to you he owes much of his success, and that to you is the credit of a little affair in Marienbad, which ended rather unpleasantly for a certain hosiery manufacturer from Chemnitz named Müller."
Her faced blanched, her eyes grew terrified, and her nails clenched themselves into her white palms.
"Ah! Then you--you have found me, m'sieur, for purposes of revenge--you--you intend to give me over to the police because of the fraud I practised upon you! But I ask you to have pity for me," she begged in French. "I am a woman--and--and I swear to you that I was forced to act towards you as I did."
"You forced open my despatch-box, believing that I carried valuables there, and found, to your dismay, only a few papers."
"I was compelled to do so by Banfield," she said simply. "He mistook you for another man, a diplomat, and believed that you had certain important documents with you."
"Then he made a very great mistake," I laughed. "And after your clever love-making with me you only got some extracts from a Government report, together with a few old letters."
"From those letters we discovered who you really were," mademoiselle said. "And then we were afraid."
"Afraid that I would pay Banfield back in his own coin, eh?"
"I was afraid. He was not, for he told me that if you attempted any reprisal, he would at once denounce you to the Germans."
"Thanks. I'm glad you've told me that," I said, with feigned unconcern. Truth to tell, however, I was much upset by the knowledge that the cunning American who so cleverly evaded the police had discovered my present vocation.