“I don’t know anything about this necklace,” I answered, stupidly, “I didn’t bring it.”
“You—didn’t bring it?”
“No. At least, that red leather thing isn’t the case I carried. When the fellow pulled it out from the sofa, I saw it wasn’t what I’d had, so I thanked our lucky stars, and would have tried to let you know that all hope wasn’t over, if I’d dared to catch your eye or make a signal.”
Maxine was suddenly calm. The tears had dried on her cheeks, and her eyes were fever-bright.
“Ivor, you can’t know what you are talking about,” she said, in a changed voice. “That red leather case is what you took out of your breast pocket and handed to me when I first came into the room. At the sound of the knock, I pushed it down as far as I could between the seat and back of the sofa, and then ran off to a distance before the door opened. You did bring the necklace, knowingly or not; and as it was the cause of all my trouble in the beginning, I needn’t tell you of the joy I had in seeing it, apart from the heavenly relief of being spared discovery of the thing I feared. Now, when you’ve given me the other packet, which you hid so marvellously, I can go away happy.”
I stared at her, feeling more than ever like one in a dream.
“I gave you the only thing I brought,” I said. “It was in my breast pocket, inside my coat. I took it out, and put it in your hands. There was no other thing. Look again in the sofa. It must be there still. This red case is something else—we can try to account for it later. It all came through the lights not working. If it hadn’t been dusk you would have seen that I gave you a dark green leather letter-case—quite different from this, though of about the same length—rather less thick, and—v
Frantically she began ransacking the crevice between the seat and back of the sofa, but nothing was there. We might have known there could be nothing or the Commissary of Police would have been before us. With a cry she cut me short at last throwing up her hands in despair. She was deathly pale again, and all the light had gone out of her eyes leaving them dull as if she had been sick with some long illness.
“What will become of me?” she stammered. “The treaty lost! My God—what shall I do? Ivor, you are killing me. Do you know—you are killing me?”
The word “treaty” was new to me in this connection, for the Foreign Secretary had not thought it necessary that his messenger should be wholly in his secrets—and Maxine’s. Yet hearing the word brought no great surprise. I knew that I had been cat’s-paw in some game of high stakes. But it was of Maxine I thought now, and the importance of the loss to her, not the national disaster which it might well be also.