"Well, you know how it is yourself."
"I know?" It was one thing to leave off hating him, quite another to ally Gavan Napier with the underground work of the world of spies.
"Nous pêchons aujourd'hui des plus gros poissons, surtout à,"—he dropped out as lightly as a smoke-ring the final words, "Gull Island."
Napier, leaning forward to take back the burning match, very nearly fell off his chair.
"What do you know about—"
"Oh, Gull Island is one of our secret-service pets," Singleton went on, still in French—though it seemed the height of improbability that, had he spoken in English, any unseen listener could have distinguished words falling in the voice you would say was low by nature rather than by caution. "Jolly little place, Gull Island. I was there last month."
"Comment!" Napier said, accepting the medium chosen by his interlocutor. "You mean before I—"
"Oh, yes, two weeks before you reported. You didn't, so far as I remember,"—he seemed to indicate a flaw or even a suspicious circumstance—"you didn't connect this woman with it."
"What woman?"
"Oh, then there is more than one?"