He didn't want to see her. He would make no effort to find her. She might have been prevented from joining him--perhaps arrested.
After the train had halted, he took his time. No one whom he recognized was on the platform. Directing a porter to attend to his baggage, he went quickly to the embarkation office to get his permit for going aboard. As he was entering, he felt his arm touched timidly, and turned.
He made an effort to act courteously. "Of course. There are formalities to be gone through. You'd better stick close to me. Don't attract attention. Let me do the talking."
They fell into line behind a queue of passengers, winding slowly toward a table where officials were receiving and inspecting passports. He stood well in front of her, doing his best to hide her. When his turn came and the official held out his hand, he presented her passport with his own perfunctorily.
The official was on the point of returning them, when a stockily-built man leaned across his shoulder and whispered something. Both of them looked up, staring hard at Santa.
"Which is Miss Jones?" the official asked.
"So you're Miss Jones, an American citizen?"
Before she could reply, Hindwood had interposed. "I've already told you she's Miss Jones. If you'll look, you'll see that her passport's marked _Diplomatic_ as well as mine."
The two men consulted together in lowered tones. Then the passport was O.K.'d and restored.
Picking it up, together with the embarkation permits, Hindwood strolled leisurely towards the gangplank. Directly they were on board he hurried Santa to her cabin and shut the door.
"You'll stay here till we sight France. I'm giving no one else the opportunity for suspecting a likeness."
THE steamer had no sooner reached Calais than a new cause for alarm presented itself. During the channel crossing Hindwood had been keyed up to the last point of tension. Every moment he had expected to be tapped on the shoulder and informed that his secretary's identity had been discovered. He had spent most of his time surreptitiously mounting guard in the neighborhood of Santa's cabin. If the same man chanced to pass him twice, he had at once jumped to the conclusion that he was being shadowed.
The hesitancy at Dover over O.K.'ing Santa's passport had robbed him of whatever sense of security he had possessed. It had compelled him to acknowledge the ruin that faced him, should he be exposed while engineering the flight of so notorious a criminal. As the Major had warned him, she was being sought by the police of every country.