"Karl" remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he from "Karl." Colonel Stanistreet, facing his caller, sat half turned away from the windows. Everything rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows he would elect first to close.
A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had foreseen, to the right, and momentarily disappeared in the recess of the farther window.
In the same instant Lanyard slipped noiselessly from behind the portière, and dropped into that capacious wing chair which Blensop had thoughtfully placed for him some time since.
Thus seated, making himself as small and still as possible, he was wholly concealed from all other occupants of the library but Blensop; and even this last was little likely to discover him.
He did not. He closed and latched the farther window, then that wherein Lanyard had lurked, and ambled back into the room with never a glance toward that shadowed corner which held the wing chair.
And Lanyard drew a deep breath, if a quiet one. Behind him the conversation had continued without break. It was true, he could see nothing; but he could hear all that was said, he had missed no syllable, and now every second was informing him to his profit....
"Your secretary, no doubt, has told you I am a survivor of the _Assyrian_ disaster."
"You were, I believe, expecting a certain communication of extraordinary character by the _Assyrian_, to be brought, that is, by an agent of the British Secret Service."
After an almost imperceptible pause Stanistreet said evenly: "It is possible."
"A communication, in fact, of such character that it was impossible to entrust it to the mails or to cable transmission, even in code."
"And you are aware that, of the two gentlemen entrusted with the care of this document, one was drowned when the _Assyrian_ went down, and the other so seriously injured that he has not yet recovered consciousness, but was transferred directly from the pier to a hospital when the _Saratoga_ docked."
"Colonel Stanistreet," said the impostor deliberately, "I have that communication. I will ask you not to question me too closely as to how it came into my possession. I have it: that is sufficient."
"If you possess any document which you conceive to be so valuable to the British Government, monsieur, and consequently to the Allied cause, I have every confidence in your intention to deliver it to me without delay."