k,
concealed these papers in it, and repacked it. You believe that, eh?"

It sounded wild enough, I acknowledged gloomily as I sat staring at the
carpet with my elbows on my knees.

"You've been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!" the refrain
sang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode,
more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myself
by my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrant
confederate of a clever spy?

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh, what's the use?" I muttered. "No, of course I don't believe it, and
you won't either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might as
well suggest that if the thief hadn't been gone when they arrived, the
manager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctor
drugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let's end
all this! I'm ready to go ashore if you want to take me. In your place
I know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on general
principles I should order the man who told it shot."

"Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne," was the cool response of the Englishman.
"The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at German
spies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it's
hysteria. But by and by you'll change your minds, as we did, and know
the German secret service for what it is--the most competent thing, the
most widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the world
has to fight to-day."

"You don't mean," I inquired blankly, "that you believe me?"

It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to be
accepted; but then, as a general thing I don't suddenly discover that I
have been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.

"I mean," he corrected with truly British phlegm, "that I can't say
positively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one--probably
Franz von Blenheim--wants to send these papers home by way of Italy
and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail for
Naples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it's ten to
one that nobody will suspect you and that your baggage will go through
untouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet.
Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, or
candles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private code
and reads that you are coming and that