"This gentleman has just done me a service, Lady Crandall. May I present——"
"So sorry. You don't know my name. My clumsiness. Captain Woodhouse." The man bridged the dangerous gap hurriedly. Lady Crandall acknowledged the introduction with a gracious smile.
"Your husband is Sir George——" he began.
"Yes, Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock. And you——"
"Quite a recent comer. Transferred from the Nile country here. Report to-morrow."
"All of the new officers have to report to the governor's wife as well," Lady Crandall rallied, with a glance at Jane. "You must come and see me—and Miss Gerson, who will be with me until her boat sails."
Woodhouse caught his breath. Jane Gerson, who knew him, at the governor's home! But he mastered himself in a second and bowed his thanks. Lady Crandall was moving toward the door. Her ward turned and held out a hand to Woodhouse.
"So good of you to have straightened out my finances," she said, with a smile in which the man hoped he read full forgiveness for his denial of a few minutes before. "If you're ever in America I hope——" He looked up quickly. "I hope somebody will be as nice to you. Good night."
Woodhouse and Almer were alone in the mongrel reception room. The hour was late. Almer began sliding folding wooden shutters across the back of the street windows. Woodhouse lingered over the excuse of a final cigarette, knowing the moment for his rapprochement with his fellow Wilhelmstrasse spy was at hand. He was more distraught than he cared to admit even to himself. The day's developments had been startling. First the stunning encounter with Capper there on the very Rock that was to be the scene of his delicate operations—Capper, whom he had thought sunk in the oblivion of some Alexandrian wine shop, but who had followed him on the Princess Mary. The fellow had deliberately cast himself into his notice, Woodhouse reflected; there had been menace and insolent hint of a power to harm in his sneering objurgation that Woodhouse should remember his name against a second meeting. "Capper—never heard the name in Alexandria, eh?" What could he mean by that if not that somehow the little ferret had learned of his visit to the home of Doctor Koch? And that meant—why, Capper in Gibraltar was as dangerous as a coiled cobra!
Then the unexpected meeting with Jane Gerson, the little American he had mourned as lost in the fury of the war. Ah, that was a joy not unmixed with regrets! What did she think of him? First, he had been forced coldly to deny the acquaintance that had meant much to him in moments of recollection; then, he had attempted a lame explanation, which explained nothing and must have left her more mystified than before. In fact, he had frankly thrown himself on the mercy of a girl on whom he had not the shadow of claim beyond the poor equity of a chance friendship—an incident she might consider as merely one of a day's travel as far as he could know. He had stood before her caught in a deceit, for on the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten ride from Calais to Paris he had represented himself as hurrying back to Egypt, and here she found him still out of uniform and in a hotel in Gibraltar.