The Spy in Black

by J. Storer Clouston

"All in the past tense now," said he.

"I suppose so," she answered; "yet I sometimes find it hard to believe that they are all as poisoned against England and as ignorant and callous as people think. I can't picture some of my friends like that!"

She seemed to have got over her first touch of resentment. There was certainly an air of good-breeding and even of distinction about the man, and after all, his extreme assurance sat very naturally on him. It had an unpremeditated matter-of-course quality that made it difficult to remain offended.

"It is hard to picture a good many things," he said thoughtfully. "Were you long in Germany?"

She told him two years, and then questioned him in return; but he seemed to have a gift for conveying exceedingly little information with an air of remarkable finality—as though he had given a complete report and there was an end of it. On the other hand, he had an equal gift for putting questions in a way that made it impossible not to answer without churlishness. For his manner never lacked courtesy, and he showed a flattering interest in each word of her replies. She felt that she had never met a man who had put her more on her mettle and made her instinctively wish more to show herself to advantage.

Yet she seemed fully capable of holding her own, for after half an hour's conversation it would have been remarkably difficult to essay a biographical sketch of Miss Eileen Holland. She had spent a number of years abroad, and confessed to being a fair linguist; she was going to the Islands "to stay with some people"; and she had previously done "a little" war work—so little, apparently, that she had been advised to seek a change of air, as her companion observed with a smile.

"Anyhow, I have not done enough," she said with a sudden intensity of suppressed feeling in her voice.

The keen-faced clergyman glanced at her quickly, but said nothing. A minute or two later he announced that he had some correspondence to look over, and thereupon he left her with the same air of decision instantly acted on with which he had first addressed her. He passed through the door of the deck-house, and she got a glimpse of his head going down the companion. Her face remained quite composed, but in her eyes there seemed to be the trace of a suggestion that she was unused to see gentlemen quit her side quite so promptly.

A few minutes later she went down herself to the ladies' cabin. Coming out, the foot of the companion was immediately opposite, and beyond stretched the saloon. At the far end of this sat the clergyman, and at the sight of him Miss Holland paused for a moment at the foot of the ladder and looked at him with a face that seemed to show both a little amusement and a little wonder. He sat quite by himself, with a bundle of papers on the table at his elbow. One of these was in his hand, and he was reading it with an air of extraordinary concentration. He had carelessly pushed back his black felt hat, and what arrested her was the odd impression this produced. With his hat thus rakishly tilted, all traces of his clerical profession seemed mysteriously to have vanished. The white dog-collar was there all right, but unaided it seemed singularly incapable of making him into a conventional minister. Miss Holland went up on deck rather thoughtfully. The little mail boat was now far out in the midst of a waste of waters. The ill-omened tideway was on its best behaviour; but even so, there was a constant gentle roll as the oily swell swung in from the Atlantic. Ahead, on the starboard bow, loomed the vast island precipices; astern the long Scottish coast faded into haze. One other vessel alone was to be seen—a long, low, black ship with a single spike of a mast and several squat funnels behind it. An eccentric vessel this seemed; for she first meandered towards the mail boat and then meandered away again, with no visible business on the waters.

The girl moved along the deck till she came to the place where her suit-case had been stowed. Close beside it were two leather kit-bags, and as she paused there it was on these that her eyes fell. She looked at them, in fact, very attentively. On each were the initials "A.B.", and on their labels the legend, "The Rev. Alex. Burnett." She came a step nearer and studied them still more closely. A few old luggage-labels were still affixed, and one at least of these bore the word "Berwick." Miss Holland seemed curiously interested by her observations.