“But if there are so many plots, why are there so few results? We seldom hear——”
“Because if plotters are safe here, so are spies. Every European Government maintains an army of spies in this country. Every assemblage of plotters has one or more traitors in the pay of those who are menaced. It’s as broad as it’s long. But go on with your story. I only wanted to assure you that it will have to be a very remarkable case of plotting to surprise me.”
Caruth plunged in. “When I came home that night,” he began, “she was waiting for me. I had never seen her before. She said she was a Russian—the daughter of a Russian man and an American woman. She gave me a name, but it was probably assumed. She wanted a letter that had been mailed to me in Stockholm ten days before—by mistake, she said. It enclosed another letter that had been picked up in a bottle floating in the Baltic. The address of this second letter was partly illegible, but it was directed in my care and was sent to me accordingly. She said the letter belonged of right to her friends. While she was speaking the letter arrived—by special delivery. It seemed to be as she had stated. I was about to surrender it to her when my man, Wilkins, claimed it. More, he proved his claim. I gave him the letter. She tried to buy it from him—offered eighteen hundred dollars cash for it. Wilkins refused. Then she threatened him. Said she asked him to surrender it for his own sake; that he would be killed if he once read it; that she could not save him. Of course this smacked of revolution, nihilism, terrorism. Wilkins appeared to be frightened. He agreed to surrender the letter. He laid it on the table, took the money, and went out. Three minutes later we discovered that he had substituted blank paper for the letter. I ran after him and found him dead. The girl left just before the police came.”
“And you concealed the fact that she had been here. Why?”
Caruth colored. “It—it isn’t a thing that one tells to just any one,” he stammered. “But—well, I suppose it sounds foolish to you, but—I love her.”
The reporter did not smile. “Foolish?” he echoed gently. “Why foolish? Love is not foolishness. It’s madness, perhaps, but not foolishness. Good Heavens! Do you think one can be a newspaper man and see daily the broad trail of joy and sorrow, blood, death, ruin, happiness, rapture, and all the rest of it that love marks athwart the path of human life, and think it foolishness? Why, man, love means life! It means the preservation of the race! It means evolution! It is the one great primal passion! No, Mr. Caruth; never expect a newspaper man to laugh at love. He has seen too much of it. Of course I knew that must be your reason for screening the woman. But do you think she killed him?”
Caruth shook his head emphatically. “No!” he declared. “No!”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t.” The young fellow leaned forward. “She couldn’t,” he declared eagerly. “See here: Wilkins took the money and fled. He knew we would be after him in a moment. He would not have delayed. He must have been out on that fire-escape and down to the place where he was killed before I left the room. This is the eighth floor; he was found on the third. He must have gone there by himself. No one could have carried his body there—not possibly! And it is preposterous to suppose that he went down to the third floor and waited there for her to overtake and murder him. No! She didn’t do it! She couldn’t have done it.”
“An accomplice?”