"I bet that didn't do you much good!"
"I lost the first game," Crawshay confessed candidly. "I see that you know all about it."
"No need to put me wiser than I am," the girl observed carelessly. "Jocelyn
Thew's no talker."
"Not unless it serves his purpose. It is astonishing," Crawshay went on reflectively, "how the science of detection has changed during the last ten years. When I was an apprentice at it—and though you may not think it. Miss Sharey, I am a professional, not an amateur, although I am generally employed on Government business—secrecy was our watchword. We hid in corners, we were stealthy, we always posed as being something we weren't. We should have denied emphatically having the slightest interest in the person under surveillance. In these days, however, everything is changed. We play the game with the cards upon the table—all except the last two or three, perhaps—and curiously enough, I am not at all sure that it doesn't add finesse to the game."
Her eyes flashed appreciatively.
"You're dead right," she acknowledged. "Take us two, for instance. You know very well that Jocelyn Thew is a pal of mine. You know very well that I shall see him within the next twenty-four hours. You know very well that you're out to hunt him to the death, and you know that I know it. Every question you ask me has a purpose, yet we talk here just as chance acquaintances might—I, a girl whom you rather like the look of—you do like the look of me, don't you, Mr. Crawshay?"
Crawshay had no need to be subtle. His eyes and tone betrayed his admiration.
"I have thoroughly disliked you ever since you were too clever for me in
New York," he confessed, "and I have been in love with you all the time."
"And you," she continued, with a little gleam of appreciation in her eyes, "are a very pleasant-looking, smart, agreeable Englishman, who looks as though he knew almost enough to ask a poor girl out to dinner."
Crawshay glanced at his wrist watch.