"No hurry, Captain," Crandall caught him up. "Expect Major Bishop in every minute—small matter of official detail. You and he can go down the Rock together when he leaves."
Woodhouse's mind leaped to the meaning behind his superior's careless words. The hastily despatched note—that was to summon Bishop to Government House; Crandall's speech about the two spies and the arrest of one of them—Louisa, he meant—and now this summary order that he wait the arrival of Bishop—would the second arrest be here in this room? The man who carried a number from the Wilhelmstrasse felt the walls of the library slowly closing in to crush him; he could almost hear the whisper and mutter of the inexorable machine moving them closer—closer. Be alone with the man whose word could send bullets into his heart!
"A very pleasant dinner—Lady Crandall's," Woodhouse began, eager to lighten the tenseness of the situation.
"Yes, it seemed so." Crandall offered the younger man his cigarette case, and, lighting a smoke himself, straddled the hearth, his eyes keenly observant of Woodhouse's face.
"Rather odd, Americans. But jolly nice." The captain laughed in reminiscence of the unspoiled Shermans.
"I thought so—I married one," Crandall retorted.
The ear of Woodhouse's mind could hear more plainly now the grinding of the cogs; the immutable power of fate lay there.
"Oh—er—so you did. Very kind she has been to me. I got very little of this sort of thing at Wady Halfa."
"By the way, Woodhouse"—Crandall blew a contemplative puff toward the ceiling—"strange Mrs. Sherman should have thought she saw you at Berlin."
"Odd mistake, to be sure," Woodhouse admitted, struggling to put ease into his voice. "The lady seems to have a penchant, as her husband says, for finding familiar faces."