I felt the strength of him as he set me down and released his clasp. A man of iron, with muscles like taut steel. And again, I felt afraid, especially as he did not move aside, but stood directly in front of me, staring into my face.
“What are you really doing here, Anne Beddingfeld?” he said abruptly.
“I’m a gipsy seeing the world.”
“Yes, that’s true enough. The newspaper correspondent is only a pretext. You’ve not the soul of the journalist. You’re out for your own hand—snatching at life. But that’s not all.”
What was he going to make me tell him? I was afraid—afraid. I looked him full in the face. My eyes can’t keep secrets like his, but they can carry the war into the enemy’s country.
“What are you really doing here, Colonel Race?” I asked deliberately.
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. He was clearly taken aback, though. At last he spoke, and his words seemed to afford him a grim amusement.
“Pursuing ambition,” he said. “Just that—pursuing ambition. You will remember, Miss Beddingfeld, that ‘by that sin fell the angels,’ etc.”
“They say,” I said slowly, “that you are really connected with the Government—that you are in the Secret Service. Is that true?”
Was it my fancy, or did he hesitate for a fraction of a second before he answered?