The other waved an airy cigar.
"You can take it from me, my dear Colonel, that he's not," he answered.
"I'll take nothing of the sort from you," the Colonel answered acridly. "He's there none the less because he's there incognito."
The young man winced; and the Colonel withdrew.
"Jove!" he said. "I'd just like to know how far these beggars have trafficked in treason with Germany."
"Not at all," replied Mr. Trupp. "They've humbugged emselves into believing they're 'running great risks in a great cause,' as they say—or doing the dirty to make a party score, as you and I'd put it. That's all."
The Colonel walked home, oppressed. After supper, as he sat with his wife in the loggia, he told her of Ruth's strange secretiveness in the matter of the garage.
"There she is!" said Mrs. Lewknor quietly nodding over her work. Ruth, indeed, was strolling slowly along the cliff from the direction of the Meads in the gorgeous evening. Opposite the hostel a track runs down to the beach beneath. At that point she paused as though waiting for somebody; and then disappeared from view.
Ten minutes later Mrs. Lewknor spoke again in the same hushed voice.
"Here's the other!"