“Please go on,” she said softly, and added very gently, “I believe you.”
But even with those words in his ears the beginning was not easy. Gordon drew a deep breath and launched forth.
“I am not the man you think,” he said, and looked at her to see how she would take it. “My name is not George Hayne. My name is Cyril Gordon.”
As one might launch an arrow at a beloved victim and long that it may not strike the mark, so he sent his truth home to her understanding, and waited in breathless silence, hoping against hope that this might not turn her against him.
“Oh!” she breathed softly, as if some puzzle were solving itself. “Oh!”—this time not altogether in surprise, nor as if the fact were displeasing. She looked at him expectantly for further revelation, and he plunged into his story headlong.
“I’m a member of the Secret Service,—headquarters here in Washington,—and day before yesterday I was sent to New York on an important errand. A message of great import written in a private code had been stolen from one of our men. I was sent to get it before they could decipher it. The message involved matters of such tremendous significance that I was ordered to go under an assumed name, and on no account to let anyone know of my mission. My orders were to get the message, and let nothing hinder me in bringing it with all haste to Washington. I went with the full understanding that I might even be called upon to risk my life.”
He looked up. The girl sat wide-eyed, with hands clasped together at her throat.
He hurried on, not to cause her any needless anxiety.
“I won’t weary you with details. There were a good many annoying hindrances on the way, which served to make me nervous, but I carried out the programme laid down by my chief, and succeeded in getting possession of the message and making my escape from the house of the man who had stolen it. As I closed the door behind me, knowing that it could be but a matter of a few seconds at longest before six furious men would be on my track, who would stop at nothing to get back what I had taken from them, I saw a carriage standing almost before the house. The driver took me for the man he awaited, and I lost no time in taking advantage of his mistake. I jumped in, telling him to drive as fast as he could. I intended to give him further directions, but he had evidently had them from another quarter, and I thought I could call to him as soon as we were out of the dangerous neighborhood. To add to my situation I soon became sure that an automobile and a motor-cycle were following me. I recognized one of the men in the car as the man who sat opposite to me at the table a few minutes before. My coachman drove like mad, while I hurried to secure the message so that if I were caught it would not be found, and to put on a slight disguise—some eyebrows and things the chief had given me. Before I knew where I was, the carriage had stopped before a building. At first I thought it was a prison—and the car and motor-cycle came to a halt just behind me. I felt that I was pretty well trapped.”
The girl gave a low moan, and Gordon, not daring to look up, hurried on with his story.