"That's one for you, Antitch," the Englishman laughed. "Another Bulgarophile. We're hopeless, aren't we? Upon my soul, people like Prussians and Bulgarians are justified in thinking that we're traitors to our convictions when they witness the immediate affinity between most of them and most of us. I say, you must forgive me for being so full of voluble buck this morning," he went on to Sylvia. "It really is the effect of the bath. I feel like a general who's been made a knight commander of that most honorable order for losing an impregnable position and keeping his temper. Well, I'm sorry to bother you, but I think you'd better be confronted by your accomplice. We have reason to doubt his bona fides, and Colonel Michailovitch, our criminal expert, would like to have your testimony. You'll intrust this lady to me?" he asked Antitch, who saluted ceremoniously. "All right, old thing, you'll bark your knuckles if you try to be too polite in a railway carriage. Come along, then, and we'll tackle the colonel."
"I think I will come as well," said Antitch.
"Of course, of course. I don't know if it's etiquette to introduce a suspected spy to her temporary jailer, but this is Lieutenant Antitch, and my name's Hazlewood. You've come from Rumania, haven't you? Here, let me carry your valise. Even if you are condemned by the court, you won't be condemned to travel any more in this train. What an atrocious sentence! Voyages forcés for twenty years!"
"Rumania was very well," said Sylvia, as they passed along the corridor to the platform.
"Still flirting with intervention, I suppose?" Hazlewood went on. "Odd effect this war has of making one think of countries as acquaintances. All Europe has been reduced to a suburb. I was sent up here from Gallipoli, and I find Nish—which with deep respect to Antitch I had always regarded as an unknown town consisting of mud and pigs, or as one of the stations where it was possible to eat between Vienna and Constantinople—as crowded and cosmopolitan as Monte Carlo. The whole world and his future wife is here."
Sylvia was trying to remember how the name Hazlewood was faintly familiar to her, but the recollection was elusive, and she asked about her big trunk.
"If you're going on to Salonika," he advised, "you'd better get on as soon as possible after the stain of suspicion has been erased from your passport. Nish is full up now, but presently—" He broke off, and looked across at Antitch with an expression of tenderness.
The young Serbian shrugged his shoulders; and they passed into the office of Colonel Michailovitch, who was examining Sylvia's passport with the rapt concentration of gaze that could only be achieved by some one who was incapable of understanding a single word of what he was apparently reading. The colonel bowed to Sylvia when she entered, and invited her to sit down. Hazlewood asked him if he might look at the passport.
"It's quite in order, I think, mon colonel," he said in French. The colonel agreed with him.
"You have no objection to its being returned?"