"Well," I replied. "What reason have you then to rearrange my clothes?"
Her face reddened and she seemed flustered.
"I wasn't in your room," she faltered. "I remember now. I believe the tailor was here. One of the servants let him in."
I have no reason to shield Mrs. Macleod, for with true Scottish thrift she got as much out of me as she could and then afterwards declared in court that she thought I was a German spy a fortnight after I had been in her house.
I made it my business to go around to my tailor's within an hour's time and he contradicted her story. He had not been at the house. To completely verify my suspicions that I was being shadowed, I went the next day into the "F and F," a well-known caterer on Prince's Street. In the writing-room I wrote some letters, one of which I purposely dropped on the floor. I withdrew to the washroom and returning in about fifteen minutes noticed that the letter had disappeared. Making inquiries of "buttons" and of the "desk girl" I learned that a gentleman had quietly picked up the letter and without reading it had put it in his pocket and walked away. That settled it. They were after me.
I hope this particular detective or his superior could read Greek. For they, or whoever spent their time translating my letter, read an ancient Greek version of "Mary had a Little Lamb."
I recognized it as an occasion where I had to make a right royal bluff. I went at once to police headquarters in Edinburgh. I asked for Chief Constable Ross, and sent in my card bearing Dr. A. K. Graves, Turo, S. Australia. Presently I was shown into the chief's room and was received by a typical Scottish gentleman. I opened fire in this way:
"Have you any reason to believe that I am a German spy?"
I saw that it had knocked him off his pins.
"Why, no," he said, startled. "I don't know anything at all about it."