Before dinner Maurice made all his preparations for leaving by the 10 o’clock train in the morning. After coffee and a game of billiards he scribbled a note to an old college friend with whom he had arranged to spend a few days in the following week, and went out with George to post it at the little post-office opposite the Anchor Hotel. When they reached their gate they saw a man walking slowly up the road, and at the second glance recognised him by the light of a gas-lamp as one of the servants of Count Slavianski. He turned at the sound of their footsteps, but immediately faced about and went on more quickly towards the village.
Maurice Buckland was not by nature a suspicious man, but the sight of the foreigner brought to his recollection the incidents of the day and of the past fortnight, and for the first time he wondered whether he was being dogged. The arrival of the foreigners in the village a few days after his own; their apparent want of occupation; their frequent visits to town, going and returning by the same trains as himself; their persistent endeavours to improve their acquaintance with him: all these incidents, which appeared to have no special significance when they happened, seemed now, in the light of the European situation, to gain importance. He recalled the strange matter of the bag, and, thinking backward, fancied he remembered that the Count’s secretary had a black bag when he entered the carriage at Waterloo. If in the hurry of their departure at Sunbury they had taken his bag by mistake, surely it would have been returned by this time; his name was in it. Short though his experience in the diplomatic world had been, he was alive to the dangers of espionage; was it possible that Count Slavianski and his subordinates were agents of one of the Powers?
“A penny for your thoughts,” said George suddenly.
Maurice slackened his pace.
“What would you say to your friend the Count being a spy?” he replied in a low tone.
“I say, do you mean it?” said George. “What a lark! Who is he spying on?”
“Speak low, and I’ll tell you what I suspect.”
He told George some of the essential facts of the situation, winding up with the incident of the bag.
“It’s rummy, certainly,” said George, considerably excited. “But do you think it’s likely? Why should half a dozen foreigners spy on you? What reason have they to suppose that you would have any information of importance to them?”
“Only this; that I am the only member of our agency at present in London. These foreigners do things very thoroughly; it is not at all unlikely that they would keep me under observation. The Count did not travel up with me to-day, but two of his men did. I wonder whether you could find out discreetly, in the village, when the Count went up?”