"Is there really any need to deceive me further?" he inquired.
"I am telling you the simple truth," said Blacklock unruffled. "I had the great good fortune to make Miss Holland's acquaintance on the mail-boat crossing to these islands. She was going to visit Mr Craigie—that intellectual gentleman you met yesterday—under the precise circumstances he described. I noticed Miss Holland the moment she came aboard the boat." He paused for a moment, and then turned to Eileen with a smile. "I have a confession to make to you, Miss Holland, which I may as well get off my chest now. My mind, naturally enough perhaps, was rather running on spies, and when I discovered that you were travelling with a suit-case of German manufacture I had a few minutes' grave suspicion. I now apologise."
Eileen laughed.
"Only a few minutes!" she exclaimed. "It seems to me I got off very easily!"
"That was why I was somewhat persistent in my conversation," he continued, still smiling a little, "but it quickly served the purpose of satisfying me absolutely that my guns were on the wrong target. And so I promptly relieved you of my conversation."
He turned again to von Belke.
"Then, Mr Belke, a very curious thing happened, which one of us may perhaps be pardoned for thinking diabolical and the other providential. Miss Holland happened to have met the real Mr Burnett and bowled me out. And then I had another lucky inspiration. If Miss Holland will pardon me for saying so in her presence, I had already been struck with the fact that she was a young lady of very exceptional looks and brains and character—and, moreover, she knew Germany and she knew German. It occurred to me that in dealing with a young and probably not unimpressionable man such an ally might conceivably come in useful."
"Robin," interrupted his old friend, with his rich laugh, "you are the coldest-blooded brute I ever met!"
"To plot against a man like that!" agreed von Belke with bitter emphasis.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you," said Captain Phipps, with a gallant glance at the lady. "However, on you go with your yarn."