“One of my own men? I do not understand,” and the officer looked at him curiously.
“At least one of the police. He came to me at the Hotel Continental at Cologne to examine my passport. He asked me where I was going from Cologne, and I told him to Aix-la-Chapelle. He asked at which hotel I was going to stay, and I said I did not know. He said he would like to have that information for his report, and added that the Kölner Hof was near the station and very clean and comfortable. I certainly found it so.”
The officer was listening with peculiar intentness.
“Why were you not at the station to meet your wife?” he asked.
“I did not know when she would arrive; I was told that the trains were all running irregularly,” answered Stewart, prouder of his ability to lie well and quickly than he had ever been of anything else in his life.
“But how did she know at which hotel to find you?” inquired the officer, and negligently flipped the ash from his cigarette.
Stewart distinctly felt his heart turn over as he saw the abyss at his feet. How would she have known? How could she have known? What would he have done if he had really had a wife waiting at Spa? These questions flashed through his head like lightning.
“Why, I telegraphed her, of course,” he said; “and to make assurance doubly sure, I sent her a postcard.” And then his heart fell again, for he realized that the police had only to wire to Cologne to prove that no such message had been filed there.
But the officer tossed away his cigarette with a little gesture of satisfaction.
“It was well you took the latter precaution, Mr. Stewart,” he said, and Stewart detected a subtle change in his tone—it was less cold, more friendly. “The wires were closed last night to any but official business, and your message could not possibly have got through. I am surprised that it was accepted.”