"How dreadful!" shuddered Dona.
"Well, you never know. Of course, they don't go about labelled 'In the pay of the Kaiser', but there must be a great many people—English too, all shame to them!—who are receiving money from Germany to betray their country."
CHAPTER XXII
The Magic Lantern
When Marjorie took an idea into her head it generally for the time filled the whole of her mental horizon. She had never liked Miss Norton, and she now mistrusted her. The evidence that she had to go upon was certainly very slight, but, as Marjorie argued, "Straws show how the wind blows", and anyone capable of sympathizing with Germans might also be capable of assisting them. She felt somewhat in the position of Hamlet, doubting whether she had really surprised a dark secret or not, and anxious for more circumstantial evidence before she told others of her suspicions. She strictly charged Dona not to mention meeting Miss Norton in the little hamlet of Sandside, which Dona readily promised. She was not imaginative, and was at present far more interested in rows of cauliflowers or specimens of seaweeds than in problematical German spies.
Marjorie, with several detective stories fresh in her memory, determined to go to work craftily. She set little traps for Miss Norton. She would casually ask her questions about Germany, or about prisoners of war, to judge by her answers where her sympathies lay. The mistress, however, was evidently on her guard, and replied in terms of caution. One thing Marjorie learned which she considered might be a suspicious circumstance. Miss Norton received many letters from abroad. She had given foreign stamps to Rose Butler, who had seen her tear them off envelopes marked "Opened by the censor". The stamps were from Egypt, Malta, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, and Buenos Ayres, a strange variety of places in which to have correspondents, so thought Marjorie.
"Of course they're opened by the censor, but who knows if there isn't a secret cipher under the guise of an ordinary letter? They may have all kinds of treasonable secrets in them. Norty might get information and send it to those friends in foreign countries, and they would telegraph it in code through a neutral country to Berlin."
She ascertained through one of the prefects that Miss Norton intended to spend her holidays in the Isle of Wight. This again seemed extraordinary, for the teacher notoriously suffered greatly from the heat in summer, and yearned for a bracing climate such as that of Scotland; further, she was nervous about air raids, so that the south coast would surely be a very unsuitable spot to select for one who wished to take a restful vacation. Patricia, whose parents had been on a visit to Whitecliffe, and had taken her out on a Saturday afternoon, reported that at the hotel some foreigners—presumably Belgians—were staying, and that she had noticed Miss Norton drinking coffee with them in the lounge.
"Are you sure they were Belgians?" asked Marjorie with assumed carelessness.