"If it could be arranged, yes, General." Capper was spinning the brim of his bowler between nervous fingers. He did not dare meet the other's glance.
"Demmit, Capper! You come here to blackmail me! I've met your kind before. I know how to deal with your ilk."
"So help me, General, I came here to tell you the truth. I want to go to Paris—or anywhere away from here; I'll admit that. But that had nothing to do with my coming all the way here from Alexandria—spending my last guinea on a steamer ticket—to warn you of your danger. I'm an Englishman and—loyal!" Capper was pleading now. All hope of reward had sped and the vision of a cell with subsequent investigations into his own record appalled him. General Crandall sat down at his desk and began to write.
"I don't know—at any rate, I can't have you talking around here. You're going to Paris."
Capper dropped his hat. At a tap of the bell, Jaimihr Khan appeared at the doors, so suddenly that one might have said he was right behind them all the time. General Crandall directed that his orderly be summoned. When the subaltern appeared, the general handed him a sealed note.
"Orderly, turn this gentleman over to Sergeant Crosby at once," he commanded, "and give the sergeant this note." Then to Capper: "You will cross to Algeciras, where you will be put on a train for Madrid. You will have a ticket for Paris and twenty shillings for expense en route. You will be allowed to talk to no one alone before you leave Gibraltar, and under no circumstances will you be allowed to return—not while I am governor-general, at least."
Capper, his face alight with new-found joy, turned to pass out with the orderly. He paused at the doorway to frame a speech of thanks, but General Crandall's back was toward him. "Paris!" he sighed in rapture, and the doors closed behind him.
CHAPTER XII
HER COUNTRY'S EXAMPLE
"Do you know, my dear, Cynthia Maxwell is simply going to die with envy when she sees me in this!"