"No! no!" She dropped weakly on the edge of the sofa and sat leaning forward: "Not free to do harm, but surely she is free to write to a friend?"
"I wouldn't, if I were you, be heard calling yourself a friend."
"I was a friend," she said. "How far can you go back, once you've been an intimate friend?"
"You have never been a friend, intimate or otherwise, because you never really knew the woman." And then he told her—not the details of the struggle on the wharf, the escape at risk of drowning, and the two days' pursuit of one of the most notorious spies in Europe. He told her merely that Miss von Schwarzenberg was under detention during his Majesty's pleasure.
When he had done so, he devoutly wished he hadn't.
"Instead of helping us to find out who the woman's accomplices are," he complained to Napier, "your Miss Ellis will be worrying us about the woman herself."
Then Singleton developed the idea that had come to him after leaving Berkeley Street. Mightn't it be possible to get the all-important clue out of Schwarzenberg herself by means of the Ellis girl if the authorities could be persuaded to give her access to Miss Ellis?
Napier was quite sure when his visitor left that Singleton was convinced of the hopelessness as well as the inadvisability of that device. Napier thought the less about what he characterized to himself as "the fellow's crazy project," because his mind was occupied with endless speculations about Nan.
A sentence in a letter which came the next day in answer to one of Napier's, shed a certain light. "Don't you, too, feel that I must tell Lady Grant how things are before I see you here? I haven't the strength for that just yet." She went on to say she'd seen Singleton and she had since tried to get more definite news through the authorities. "But you won't want to hear about Greta, though I must just tell you that Mr. Singleton has been very kind. He's found out she's a Prisoner of the First Class. That's so like Greta, if she was to be a prisoner at all!"
In his uneasiness Napier managed, two days later, to get Singleton on the telephone. He was told in a voice with impatience of "the stupidity at H. Q. which persisted in blocking the unceasing efforts of that girl to get permission to see the Elusive One. I've advised your friend"—Singleton's laugh came metallic along the wire—"to ask you to get her the permit."