ds. For a fellow who leads a cut-and-dried
existence generally, I've been having quite a lively time. And now, to
cap the climax, I'm going to call on a girl about whom I know just one
thing--her name. By Jove, it's exactly like a story! I've got the data.
If I had any gray matter I could probably work out the facts.

"Take the St. Ives business. It's plain enough that some one wished
those papers on me, intending to unwish them in short order once we got
across. The logical suspect, judging by appearances, was Miss Falconer.
The little German went out through her room; she was the one person
I saw both at the hotel and on the _Re d'Italia_; and she acted in a
suspicious manner that first night aboard the ship. But she says she
didn't do it, and probably she didn't; it seemed infernally odd, all
along, for her to be a spy.

"Still, if she is innocent, who can be responsible? And if that affair
didn't bring her over here, what the dickens did? Something mysterious,
something dangerous, something that the French police wouldn't
appreciate, but that her conscience sanctions--that is all she deigns to
say. And why on earth did she ask me to destroy that extra? I thought
it was because she was Franz von Blenheim's agent and the paper had
an account of him that might have served as a clue to her. She says,
though, that she never heard of him. And I may be all kinds of a fool,
but it sounded straight.

"Then, there's Van Blarcom, hang him! He seemed to take a fancy to
me. He warned me about the girl, but he kept a still tongue to Captain
Cecchi and the rest. He lied deliberately, for no earthly reason, to
shield me in that interrogation; yet when those papers materialized in
my trunk, though he must have thought just what I thought as to Miss
Falconer's share in it, he didn't breathe a word. He claimed that he had
met her. She said she had never seen him. And then--rather strong for a
coincidence--we all three met again on the express. What is he doing
on this side? Shadowing her? Nonsense? And yet he seemed almighty keen
about her--Oh, hang it! I'm no Sherlock Holmes!"

The taxi pausing at this juncture, I willingly abandoned my attempt at
sleuthing and got out in the highest spirits compatible with a strictly
correct mien. I dismissed my driver. If asked to remain to _dejeuner_, I
should certainly do so. Then, with feelings of natural interest, I gazed
at the house before which I stood.

In the outward seeming, at least