rule," I explained, "secrecy is what a--a
person in your line--a--"

To save his feelings I hesitated at the word.

"A spy," he said. His face beamed with fatuous complacency.

"But if I had not known you were a spy," I asked, "would not that have
been better for you?"

"In dealing with a party like you, Mr. Crosby," Schnitzel began
sententiously, "I use a different method. You're on a secret mission
yourself, and you get your information about the nitrate row one way,
and I get it another. I deal with you just like we were drummers in the
same line of goods. We are rivals in business, but outside of business
hours perfect gentleman."

In the face of the disbelief that had met my denials of any secret
mission, I felt to have Schnitzel also disbelieve me would be too great
a humiliation. So I remained silent.

"You make your report to the State Department," he explained, "and I
make mine to--my people. Who they are doesn't matter. You'd like to
know, and I don't want to hurt your feelings, but--that's MY secret."

My only feelings were a desire to kick Schnitzel heavily, but for
Schnitzel to suspect that was impossible. Rather, he pictured me as
shaken by his disclosures.

As he hung over the rail the glare of the sun on the tumbling water lit
up his foolish, mongrel features, exposed their cunning, their utter
lack of any character, and showed behind the shifty eyes the vacant,
half-crooked mind.

Schnitzel was smiling to himself with a smile of complete
self-satisfaction. In the light of his later conduct, I grew to
understand that smile. He had anticipated a rebuff, and he had been
received, as he read it, with consideration. The irony of my politeness
he had entirely missed. Instead, he read in what I said the admiration
of the amateur for the professional. He saw what he believed to be a
high agent of the Government treating him as a worthy antagonist. In no
other way can I explain his later heaping upon me his confidences. It
was the vanity of a child trying to show off.

In ten days, in the limited area of a two-thousand-ton steamer, one
could not help but learn something of the history of so communicative a
fellow-passenger as Schnitzel. His parents were German and still lived
in Germany. But he himself had been brought up on the East Side. An
uncle who kept a delicatessen shop in Avenue A had sent him to the
public schools and then to a "business college," where he had developed
remarkable expertne