Westmore, naturally short tempered, became very red, got to his feet, and began striding about the studio as though some sudden blaze of inward anger were driving him into violent motion.

“The thing to do,” he said, “is to catch this ‘Watcher’ fellow and beat him up. That’s the way to deal with blackmailers – catch ’em and beat ’em up – vermin of this sort – this blackmailing fraternity! – I haven’t anything to do; I’ll take the job!”

“We’d better talk it over first,” suggested Barres. “There seem to be several ways of going about it. One way, of course, is to turn detective and follow Thessa around town. And, as you say, spot any man who dogs her and beat him up very thoroughly. That’s your way, Jim. But Thessa, unfortunately, doesn’t desire to be featured, and you can’t go about beating up people in the streets of New York without inviting publicity.”

Westmore came back and stood near Thessalie, who looked up at him from her seat on the Chinese couch with visible interest:

“Mr. Westmore?”

“Yes?”

“Garry is quite right about the way I feel. I don’t want notoriety. I can’t afford it. It would mean stirring up every French Government agent here in New York. And if America should ever declare war on Germany and become an ally of France, then your own Secret Service here would instantly arrest me and probably send me to France to stand trial.”

She bent her pretty head, adding in a quiet voice:

“Extradition would bring a very swift end to my career. With the lying evidence against me and a Senator of France to corroborate it by perjury – ask yourselves, gentlemen, how long it would take a military court to send me to the parade in the nearest caserne!”

“Do you mean they’d shoot you?” demanded Westmore, aghast.

“Any court-martial to-day would turn me over to a firing squad!”

“You see,” said Barres, turning to Westmore, “this is a much more serious matter than a case of ordinary blackmail.”

“Why not go to our own Secret Service authorities and lay the entire business before them?” asked Westmore excitedly.

But Thessalie shook her head:

“The evidence against me in Paris is overwhelming. My dossier alone, as it now stands, would surely condemn me without corroborative evidence. Your people here would never believe in me if the French Government forwarded to them a copy of my dossier from the secret archives in Paris. As for my own Government – ” She merely shrugged.

Barres, much troubled, glanced from Thessalie to Westmore.

“It’s rather a rotten situation,” he said. “There must be, of course, some sensible way to tackle it, 207 though I don’t quite see it yet. But one thing is very plain to me: Thessa ought to remain here with us for the present. Don’t you think so, Jim?”

“How can I, Garry?” she asked. “You have only one room, and I couldn’t turn you out – ”

“I can arrange that,” interposed Westmore, turning eagerly to Barres with a significant gesture toward the door at the end of the studio. “There’s the solution, isn’t it?”

“Certainly,” agreed Barres; and to Thessalie, in explanation: “Westmore’s two bedrooms adjoin my studio – beyond that wall. We have merely to unlock those folding doors and throw his apartment into mine, making one long suite of rooms. Then you may have my room and I’ll take his spare room.”

She still hesitated.

“I am very grateful, Garry, and I admit that I am becoming almost afraid to remain entirely alone, but – ”

“Send for your effects,” he insisted cheerfully. “Aristocrates will move my stuff into Westmore’s spare room. Then you shall take my quarters and be comfortable and well guarded with Aristocrates and Selinda on one side of you, and Jim and myself just across the studio.” He cast a sombre glance at Westmore: “I suppose those rats will ultimately trail her to this place.”

Westmore turned to Thessalie:

“Where are your effects?” he asked.

She smiled forlornly:

“I gave up my lodgings this morning, packed everything, and came here, rather scared.” A little flush came over her face and she lifted her dark eyes and met Westmore’s intent gaze. “You are very kind,” she said. “My trunks are at the Grand Central Station – if 208 you desire to make up my disconcerted mind for me. Do you really want me to come here and stay a few days?”

Westmore suppressed himself no longer:

“I won’t let you go!” he said. “I’m worried sick about you!” And to Barres, who sat slightly amazed at his friend’s warmth:

“Do you suppose any of those dirty dogs have traced the trunks?”

Thessalie said:

“I’ve never yet been able to conceal anything from them.”

“Probably, then,” said Barres, “they have traced your luggage and are watching it.”

“Give me your checks, anyway,” said Westmore. “I’ll go at once and get your baggage and bring it here. If they’re watching for you it will jolt them to see a man on the job.”

Barres nodded approval; Thessalie opened her purse and handed Westmore the checks.

“You both are so kind,” she murmured. “I have not felt so sheltered, so secure in many, many months.”

Westmore, extremely red again, controlled his emotions – whatever they were – with a visible effort:

“Don’t worry for one moment,” he said. “Garry and I are going to settle this outrageous business for you. Now, I’m off to find your trunks. And if you could give me a description of any of these fellows who follow you about – ”

“Please – you are not to beat up anybody!” she reminded him, with a troubled smile.

“I’ll remember. I promise you not to.”

Barres said:

“I think one of them is a tall, bony, one-eyed man, 209 who has been hanging around here pretending to peddle artists’ materials.”

Thessalie made a quick gesture of assent and of caution:

“Yes! His name is Max Freund. I have found it impossible to conceal my whereabouts from him. This man, with only one eye, appears to be a friend of the superintendent, Soane. I am not certain that Soane himself is employed by this gang of blackmailers, but I believe that his one-eyed friend may pay him for any scraps of information concerning me.”

“Then we had better keep an eye on Soane,” growled Westmore. “He’s no good; he’ll take graft from anybody.”

“Where is his daughter, Dulcie?” asked Thessalie. “Is she not your model, Garry?”

“Yes. She’s in my room now, lying down. This morning it was pretty hot in here, and Dulcie fainted on the model stand.”

“The poor child!” exclaimed Thessalie impulsively. “Could I go in and see her?”

“Why, yes, if you like,” he replied, surprised at her warm-hearted interest. He added, as Thessalie rose: “She is really all right again. But go in if you like. And you might tell Dulcie she can have her lunch in there if she wants it; but if she’s going to dress she ought to be about it, because it’s getting on toward the luncheon hour.”

So Thessalie went swiftly away down the corridor to knock at the door of the bedroom, and Barres walked out with Westmore as far as the stairs.

“Jim,” he said very soberly, “this whole business looks ugly to me. Thessa seems to be seriously entangled in the meshes of some blackmailing spider who is sewing her up tight.”

“It’s probably a tighter web than we realise,” growled Westmore. “It looks to me as though Miss Dunois has been caught in the main net of German intrigue. And that the big spider in Berlin did the spinning.”

“That’s certainly what it looks like,” admitted the other in a grave voice. “I don’t believe that this is merely a local matter – an affair of petty, personal vengeance: I believe that the Hun is actually afraid of her – afraid of the evidence she might be able to furnish against certain traitors in Paris.”

Westmore nodded gloomily:

“I’m pretty sure of it, too. They’ve tried, apparently, to win her over. They’ve tried, also, to drive her out of this country. Now, they mean to force her out, or perhaps kill her! Good God! Garry, did you ever hear of such filthy impudence as this entire German propaganda in America?”

“Go and get her trunks,” said Barres, deeply worried. “By the time you fetch ’em back here, lunch will be ready. Afterward, we’d all better get together and talk over this unpleasant situation.”

Westmore glanced at his watch, turned and went swinging away in his quick, energetic stride. Barres walked slowly back to the studio.

There was nobody there. Thessalie had not yet returned from her visit to Dulcie Soane.

The Prophet, however, came in presently, his tail politely hoisted. An agreeable aroma from the kitchen had doubtless allured him; he made an amicable remark to Barres, suffered himself to be caressed, then sprang to the carved table – his favourite vantage point for observation – and gazed solemnly toward the dining-room.

For half an hour or more, Barres fussed and pottered 211 about in the rather aimless manner of all artists, shifting canvases and stacking them against the wall, twirling his wax Arethusa around to inspect her from every possible and impossible angle, using clouds of fixitive on such charcoal studies as required it, scraping away meditatively at a too long neglected palette.

He was already frankly concerned about Thessalie, and the more he considered her situation the keener grew his apprehension.

Yet he, like all his fellow Americans, had not yet actually persuaded himself to believe in spies.

Of course he read about them and their machinations in the daily papers; the spy scare was already well developed in New York; yet, to him and to the great majority of his fellow countrymen, people who made a profession of such a dramatic business seemed unreal – abstract types, not concrete examples of the human race – and he could not believe in them – could neither visualise such people nor realise that they existed outside melodrama or the covers of a best-seller.

There is an incredulity which knows yet refuses to believe in its own knowledge. It is very American and it represented the paradoxical state of mind of this deeply worried young man, as he stood there in the studio, scraping away mechanically at his crusted palette.

Then, as he turned to lay it aside, through the open studio door he saw a strange, bespectacled man looking in at him intently.

An unpleasant shock passed through him, and his instinct started him toward the open door to close it.

“Excuse,” said he of the thick spectacles; and Barres stopped short:

“Well, what is it?” he asked sharply.

The man, who was well dressed and powerfully built, 212 squinted through his spectacles out of little, inflamed and pig-like eyes.

“Miss Dunois iss here?” he enquired politely. “I haff a message – ”

“What is your name?”

“Excuse, please. My name iss not personally known to Miss Dunois – ”

“Then what is your business with Miss Dunois?”

“Excuse, please. It iss of a delicacy – of a nature quite private, iff you please.”

Barres inspected him in hostile silence for a moment, then came to a swift conclusion.

“Very well. Step inside,” he said briefly.

“I thank you, I will wait here – ”

“Step inside!” snapped Barres.

Startled into silence, the man only blinked at him. Under the other’s searching, suspicious gaze, the small, pig-like eyes were now shifting uneasily; then, as Barres took an abrupt step forward, the man shrank away and stammered out something about a letter which he was to deliver to Miss Dunois in private.

“You say you have a letter for Miss Dunois?” demanded Barres, now determined to get hold of him.

“I am instructed to giff it myself to her in private, all alone – ”

“Give it to me!”

“I am instruc – ”

“Give it to me, I tell you! – and come inside here! Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”

The spectacled man lost most of his colour as Barres started toward him.

“Excuse!” he faltered, backing off down the corridor. “I giff you the letter!” And he hastily thrust his hand into the side pocket of his coat. But it was 213 a pistol he poked under the other’s nose – a shiny, lumpy weapon, clutched most unsteadily.

“Hands up and turn me once around your back!” whispered the man hoarsely. “Quick! – or I shoot you!” – as the other, astounded, merely gazed at him. The man had already begun to back away again, but as Barres moved he stopped and cursed him:

“Put them up your hands!” snarled the spectacled man, with a final oath. “Keep your distance or I kill you!”

Barres heard himself saying, in a voice not much like his own:

“You can’t do this to me and get away with it! It’s nonsense! This sort of thing doesn’t go in New York!”

Suddenly his mind grew coldly, terrible clear:

“No, you can’t get away with it!” he concluded aloud, in the calm, natural voice of conviction. “Your stunt is scaring women! You try to keep clear of men – you dirty, blackmailing German crook! I’ve got your number! You’re the ‘Watcher’! – you murderous rat! You’re afraid to shoot!”

It was plain that the spectacled man had not discounted anything of this sort – plain now, to Barres, that if, indeed, murder actually had been meant, it was not his own murder that had been planned with that big, blunt, silver-plated pistol, now wavering wildly before his eyes.

“I blow your face off!” whispered the stranger, beginning to back away again, and ghastly pale.

“Keep out of thiss! I am not looking for you. Get you back; step once again inside that door away! – ”

But Barres had already jumped for him, had almost caught him, was reaching for him – when the man hurled the pistol straight at his face. The terrific impact of the heavy weapon striking him between the 214 eyes dazed him; he stumbled sideways, colliding with the wall, and he reeled around there a second.

But that second’s leeway was enough for the bespectacled stranger. He turned and ran like a deer. And when Barres reached the staircase the whitewashed hall below was still echoing with the slam of the street grille.

Nevertheless, he hurried down, but found the desk-chair empty and Soane nowhere visible, and continued on to the outer door, more or less confused by the terrific blow on the head.

Of course the bespectacled man had disappeared amid the noonday foot-farers now crowding both sidewalks east and west, on their way to lunch.

Barres walked slowly back to the desk, still dazed, but now thoroughly enraged and painfully conscious of a heavy swelling where the blow had fallen on his forehead.

In the superintendent’s quarters he found Soane, evidently just awakened after a sodden night at Grogan’s, trying to dress.

Barres said:

“There is nobody at the desk. Either you or Miss Kurtz should be on duty. That is the rule. Now, I’m going to tell you something: If I ever again find that desk without anybody behind it, I shall go to the owners of this building and tell them what sort of superintendent you are! And maybe I’ll tell the police, also!”

“Arrah, then, Misther Barres – ”

“That’s all!” said Barres, turning on his heel. “Anything more from you and you’ll find yourself in trouble!”

And he went up stairs.

The lumpy pistol still lay there in the corridor; he picked it up and took it into the studio. The weapon 215 was fully loaded. It seemed to be of some foreign make – German or Austrian, he judged by the marking which had been almost erased, deliberately obliterated, it appeared to him.

He placed it in his desk, seated himself, explored his bruises gingerly with cautious finger-tips, concluded that the bridge of his nose was not broken, then threw himself back in his armchair for some grim and concentrated thinking.

XVII
A CONFERENCE

The elegantly modulated accents of Aristocrates, announcing the imminence of luncheon, aroused Barres from disconcerted but wrathful reflections.

As he sat up and tenderly caressed his battered head, Thessalie and Dulcie came slowly into the studio together, their arms interlaced.

Both exclaimed at the sight of the young man’s swollen face, but he checked their sympathetic enquiries drily:

“Bumped into something. It’s nothing. How are you, Dulcie? All right again?”

She nodded, evidently much concerned about his disfigured forehead; so to terminate sympathetic advice he went away to bathe his bruises in witch hazel, and presently returned smelling strongly of that time-honoured panacea, and with a saturated handkerchief adorning his brow.

At the same time, there came a considerable thumping and bumping from the corridor; the bell rang, and Westmore appeared with the trunks – five of them. These a pair of brawny expressmen rolled into the studio and carried thence to the storeroom which separated the bedroom and bath from the kitchen.

“Any trouble?” enquired Barres of Westmore, when the expressmen had gone.

“None at all. Nobody looked at me twice. What’s happened to your noddle?”

“Bumped it. Lunch is ready.”

Thessalie came over to him:

“I have included Dulcie among my confidants,” she said in a low voice.

“You mean you’ve told her – ”

“Everything. And I am glad I did.”

Barres was silent; Thessalie passed her arm around Dulcie’s waist; the two men walked behind together.

The table was a mass of flowers, over which netted sunlight played. Three cats assisted – the Prophet, always dignified, blinked pleasantly from a window ledge; the blond Houri, beside him, purred loudly. Only Strindberg was impossible, chasing her own tail under the patient feet of Aristocrates, or rolling over and over beneath the table in a mindless assault upon her own hind toes.

Seated there in the quiet peace and security of the pleasant room, amid familiar things, with Aristocrates moving noiselessly about, sunlight lacing wall and ceiling, and the air aromatic with the scent of brilliant flowers, Barres tried in vain to realise that murder could throw its shadow over such a place – that its terrible menace could have touched his threshold, even for an instant.

No, it was impossible. The fellow could not have intended murder. He was merely a blackmailer, suddenly detected and instantly frightened, pulling a gun in a panic, and even then failing in the courage to shoot.

It enraged Barres to even think about it, but he could not bring himself to attach any darker significance to the incident than just that – a blackmailer, ready to display a gun, but not to use it, had come to bully a woman; had found himself unexpectedly trapped, and had behaved according to his kind.

Barres had meant to catch him. But he admitted to himself that he had gone about it very unskilfully. This added disgust to his smouldering wrath, but he realised that he ought to tell the story.

And after the rather subdued luncheon was ended, and everybody had gone out to the studio, he did tell it, deliberately including Dulcie in his audience, because he felt that she also ought to know.

“And this is the present state of affairs,” he concluded, lighting a cigarette and flinging one knee across the other, “ – that my friend, Thessalie Dunois, who came here to escape the outrageous annoyance of a gang of blackmailers, is followed immediately and menaced with further insult on my very threshold.

“This thing must stop. It’s going to be stopped. And I suggest that we discuss the matter now and decide how it ought to be handled.”

After a silence, Westmore said:

“You had your nerve, Garry. I’m wondering what I might have done under the muzzle of that pistol.”

Dulcie’s grey eyes had never left Barres. He encountered her gaze now; smiled at its anxious intensity.

“I made a botch of it, Sweetness, didn’t I?” he said lightly. And, to Westmore: “The moment I suspected him he was aware of it. Then, when I tried to figure out how to get him into the studio, it was too late. I made a mess of it, that’s all. And it’s too bad, Thessa, that I haven’t more sense.”

She gently shook her head:

“You haven’t any sense, Garry. That man might easily have killed you, in spite of your coolness and courage – ”

“No. He was just a rat – ”

“In a corner! You couldn’t tell what he’d do – ”

“Yes, I could. He didn’t shoot. Moreover, he 219 legged it, which was exactly what I was certain he meant to do. Don’t worry about me, Thessa; if I didn’t have brains enough to catch him, at least I was clever enough to know it was safe to try.” He laughed. “There’s nothing of the hero about me; don’t think it!”

“I think that Dulcie and I know what to call your behaviour,” she said quietly, taking the silent girl’s hand in hers and resting it in her lap.

“Sure; it was bull-headed pluck,” growled Westmore. “The drop is the drop, Garry, and you’re no mind-reader.”

But Barres persisted in taking it humorously:

“I read that gentleman’s mind correctly, and his character, too.” Then, to Thessalie: “You say you don’t recognise him from my description?”

She shook her head thoughtfully.

“Garry,” said Westmore impatiently, “if we’re going to discuss various ways of putting an end to this business, what way do you suggest?”

Barres lighted another cigarette:

“I’ve been thinking. And I haven’t a notion how to go about it, unless we turn over the matter to the police. But Thessa doesn’t wish publicity,” he added, “so whatever is to be done we must do by ourselves.”

Thessalie leaned forward from her seat on the lounge by Dulcie:

“I don’t ask that of you,” she remonstrated earnestly. “I only wanted to stay here for a little while – ”

“You shall do that too,” said Westmore, “but this matter seems to involve something more than annoyance and danger to you. Those miserable rascals are Germans and they are carrying on their impudent intrigues, regardless of American laws and probably to the country’s detriment. How do we know what they 220 are about? What else may they be up to? It seems to me that somebody had better investigate their activities – this one-eyed man, Freund – this handy gunman in spectacles – and whoever it was who took a shot at you the other day – ”

“Certainly,” said Barres, “and you and I are going to investigate. But how?”

“What about Grogan’s?”

“It’s a German joint now,” nodded Barres. “One of us might drop in there and look it over. Thessa, how do you think we ought to go about this affair?”

Thessalie, who sat on the sofa with Dulcie’s hand clasped in both of hers – a new intimacy which still surprised and pleasantly perplexed Barres – said that she could not see that there was anything in particular for them to do, but that she herself intended to cease living alone for a while and refrain from going about town unaccompanied.

Then it suddenly occurred to Barres that if he and Dulcie went to Foreland Farms, Thessalie should be invited also; otherwise, she’d be alone again, except for the servants, and possibly Westmore. And he said so.

“This won’t do,” he insisted. “We four ought to remain in touch with one another for the present. If Dulcie and I go to Foreland Farms, you must come, too, Thessa; and you, Jim, ought to be there, too.”

Nobody demurred; Barres, elated at the prospect, gave Thessalie a brief sketch of his family and their home.

“There’s room for a regiment in the house,” he added, “and you will feel welcome and entirely at home. I’ll write my people to-night, if it’s settled. Is it, Thessa?”

“I’d adore it, Garry. I haven’t been in the country since I left France.”

“And you, Jim?”

“You bet. I always have a wonderful time at Foreland.”

“Now, this is splendid!” exclaimed Barres, delighted. “If you disappear, Thessa, those German rats may become discouraged and give up hounding you. Anyway, you’ll have a quiet six weeks and a complete rest; and by that time Jim and I ought to devise some method of handling these vermin.”

“Nobody,” said Thessalie, smiling, “has asked Dulcie’s opinion as to how this matter ought to be handled.”

Barres turned to meet Dulcie’s shy gaze.

“Tell us what to do, Sweetness!” he said gaily. “It was stupid of me not to ask for your views.”

For a few moments the girl remained silent, then, the lovely tint deepening in her cheeks, she suggested diffidently that the people who were annoying Thessalie had been hired to do it by others more easy to handle, if discovered.

There was a moment’s silence, then Barres struck his palm with doubled fist:

“That,” he said with emphasis, “is the right way to approach this business! Hired thugs can be handled in only two ways – beat ’em up or call in the police. And we can do neither.

“But the men higher up – the men who inspire and hire these rats – they can be dealt with in other ways. You’re right, Dulcie! You’ve started us on the only proper path!”

Considerably excited, now, as vague ideas crowded in upon him, he sat smiting his knees, his brows knit in concentrated thought, aware that they were on the right track, but that the track was but a blind trail so far.

Dulcie ventured to interrupt his frowning cogitation:

“People of position and influence who hire men to do unworthy things are cowards at heart. To discover them is to end the whole matter, I think.”

“You’re absolutely right, Sweetness! Wait! I begin to see – to see things – see something – interesting – ”

He looked up at Thessalie:

“D’Eblis, Ferez Bey, Von-der-Goltz Pasha, Excellenz, Berlin – all these were mixed up with this German-American banker, Adolf Gerhardt, were they not?”

“It was Gerhardt’s money, I am sure, that bought the Mot d’Ordre from d’Eblis for Ferez – that is, for Berlin,” she said.

“Do you mean,” asked Westmore, “the New York banker, Adolf Gerhardt, of Gerhardt, Klein & Schwartzmeyer, who has that big show place at Northbrook?”

Barres smiled at him significantly:

“What do you know about that, Jim! If we go to Foreland we’re certain to be asked to the Gerhardt’s! They’re part of the Northbrook set; they’re received everywhere. They entertain the personnel of the German and Austrian Embassies. Probably their place, Hohenlinden, is a hotbed of German intrigue and propaganda! Thessa, how about you? Would you care to risk recognition in Gerhardt’s drawing-room, and see what information you could pick up?”

Thessalie’s cheeks grew bright pink, and her dark eyes were full of dancing light:

“Garry, I’d adore it! I told you I had never been a spy. And that is absolutely true. But if you think I am sufficiently intelligent to do anything to help my country, I’ll try. And I don’t care how I do it,” she 223 added, with her sweet, reckless little laugh, and squeezed Dulcie’s hand tightly between her fingers.

“Do you suppose Gerhardt would remember you?” asked Westmore.

“I don’t think so. I don’t believe anybody would recollect me. If anybody there ever saw Nihla Quellen, it wouldn’t worry me, because Nihla Quellen is merely a memory if anything, and only Ferez and d’Eblis know I am alive and here – ”

“And their hired agents,” added Westmore.

“Yes. But such people would not be guests of Adolf Gerhardt at Northbrook.”

“Ferez Bey might be his guest.”

“What of it!” she laughed. “I was never afraid of Ferez – never! He is a jackal always. A threatening gesture and he flees! No, I do not fear Ferez Bey, but I think he is horribly afraid of me… I think, perhaps, he has orders to do me very serious harm – and dares not. No, Ferez Bey comes sniffing around after the fight is over. He does no fighting, not Ferez! He slinks outside the smoke. When it clears away and night comes he ventures forth to feed furtively on what is left. That is Ferez – my Ferez on whom I would not use a dog-whip – no! – merely a slight gesture – and he is gone like a swift shadow in the dark!”

Fascinated by the transformation in her, the other three sat gazing at Thessalie in silence. Her colour was high, her dark eyes sparkled, her lips glowed. And the superb young figure so celebrated in Europe, so straight and virile, seemed instinct with the reckless gaity and courage which rang out in her full-throated laughter as she ended with a gesture and a snap of her white fingers.

“For my country – for France, whose generous mind has been poisoned against me – I would do anything – anything!” 224 she said. “If you think, Garry, that I have wit enough to balk d’Eblis, check Ferez, confuse the plotters in Berlin – well, then! – I shall try. If you say it is right, then I shall become what I never have been – a spy!”

She sat for a moment smiling in her flushed excitement. Nobody spoke. Then her expression altered, subtlely, and her dark eyes grew pensive.

“Perhaps,” she said wistfully, “if I could serve my country in some little way, France might believe me loyal… I have sometimes wished I might have a chance to prove it. There is nothing I would not risk if only France would come to believe in me… But there seemed to be no chance for me. It is death for me to go there now, with that dossier in the secret archives and a Senator of France to swear my life away – ”

“If you like,” said Westmore, very red again, “I’ll go into the business, too, and help you nail some of these Hun plotters. I’ve nothing better to do; I’d be delighted to help you land a Hun or two.”

“I’m with you both, heart and soul!” said Barres. “The whole country is rotten with Boche intrigue. Who knows what we may uncover at Northbrook?”

Dulcie rose and came over to where Barres sat, and he reached up without turning around, and gave her hand a friendly little squeeze.

She bent over beside him:

“Could I help?” she asked in a low voice.

“You bet, Sweetness! Did you think you were being left out?” And he drew her closer and passed one arm absently around her as he began speaking again to Westmore:

“It seems to me that we ought to stumble on something at Northbrook worth following up, if we go about 225 it circumspectly, Jim – with all that Austrian and German Embassy gang coming and going during the summer, and this picturesque fellow, Murtagh Skeel, being lionised by – ”

Dulcie’s sudden start checked him and he looked up at her.

“Murtagh Skeel, the Irish poet and patriot,” he repeated, “who wants to lead a Clan-na-Gael raid into Canada or head a death-battalion to free Ireland. You’ve read about him in the papers, Dulcie?”

“Yes … I want to talk to you alone – ” She blushed and dropped a confused little curtsey to Thessalie: “Would you please pardon my rudeness – ”

“You darling!” said Thessalie, blowing her a swift, gay kiss. “Go and talk to your best friend in peace!”