Harleston nodded. “She is in the German Secret Service.”
“They trust her?” Clarke marvelled.
“That is the most remarkable thing about her,” said Harleston, “so far as I know, she has never been false to the hand that paid her.”
“Which, in her position, is the cleverest thing of all!” Clarke remarked.
They passed the English Legation, a bulging, three-storied, red brick, dormer-roofed atrocity, standing a few feet in from the sidewalk; ugly as original sin, externally as repellent as the sidewalk and the narrow little drive under the porte-cochère are dirty.
“It’s a pity,” said Clarke, “that the British Legation cannot afford a man-servant to clean its front.”
“No one is presumed to arrive or leave except in carriages or motor cars,” Harleston explained. “They can push through the dirt to the entrance.”
“Why, would you believe it,” Clarke added, “the deep snow of last February lay on the walks untouched until well into the following day. The blooming Englishmen just then began to appreciate that it had snowed the previous night. Are they so slow on the secret-service end?”
“They have quite enough speed on that end,” Harleston responded. “They are on the job always and ever—also the Germans.”
“You’ve bumped into them?”