Marloff started, as well he might, and stared hard into my face.
‘My name is Colonel Sigersen,’ he said forbiddingly. ‘Have I had the pleasure of meeting you before?’
This was the opening I wanted. I drew back disdainfully.
‘I must apologise,’ I said, with irony; ‘I have not had the honour of meeting you, Colonel Sigersen. Pray do not think I wish to intrude on you.’
Marloff saw his mistake. In the secret service of Russia nothing is more common than for two different agents to be employed independently of each other, and even as spies upon each other. When that happens, if the two men are wise, they strike up a private alliance, and compare notes at their employers’ expense. When they keep each other at arm’s length, each has it in his power to cause annoyance to the other.
Marloff was now in the position of having refused my overture towards friendship, without knowing who I was. This left me free to watch him, without rendering any explanations. He was consequently furious with himself.
The fact is the man was a mere amateur, as one who drops into a profession from above generally is. De Witte had taken him out of a cavalry regiment, and made a diplomatist of him; but when it came to secret service work he was a child in the hands of a man like myself.
I saw the pretended Colonel get up and limp out of the room, no doubt to send a cipher despatch to the Minister, complaining of my arrival. I went to the manager of the hotel, introduced myself as a Russian police agent on the track of a great rouble forgery, and wormed out of him a mass of particulars with regard to Sigersen’s movements.
I gathered that he had been in Christiania about a month, having toured through Norway first as far north as Trondhjem. He had made numerous friends in the Norwegian capital, including several prominent members of the Storthing, as they call their parliament. But his chosen intimate appeared to be a judge named ——, who was regarded as a guiding spirit of the party most strongly hostile to the Swedish connection.
It was Judge —— who had prompted the erection of a fortress on the Swedish-Norwegian frontier, guarding the approach to Christiania. The same warlike functionary had decided on the judicial bench that no native of Sweden could exercise the rights of a citizen in Norway until he had taken out letters of naturalisation. In short, this judge had carefully taught his countrymen to treat the Swedes as Englishmen were treated by the Boers in the days of the Transvaal Republic.