“I have heard that you are a man of many faces,” said he. “I now can believe it. I know, too, that you are one man in a million, that you are above dramatic claptraps and needless subterfuge. I’m nerved for whatever you may say to me. Come across with it.”
“Good for you,” said Nick approvingly. “You’re a big man, Garland, big in more ways than one, and a splendid future awaits you. You are so big, in fact, like other men I have known, that you are blind to the servile treachery and dirty trickery of which some are capable, both being so foreign to you. That is one reason why big men are sometimes easily made the dupes of the others.”
“Dupes?”
“I heard you say to-night, Garland, that you hoped you had not lost your best friend.”
“Best—best friend! You don’t mean—you don’t mean——”
Garland choked and loosened the collar on his throbbing neck.
“I mean the woman you know as Verona Warren,” said Nick. “I am going to take her away from you—for your own good.”
“You mean——”
“I mean that her name is not Verona Warren,” Nick went on impressively. “I saw her in St. Petersburg three years ago, while engaged on a case for this government. She did not see me, or know of my presence there, but I learned all about her. She then was a spy in the Russian secret service, one of their cleverest, bar none. Her name is Irma Valaska. She is the widow of a Russian soldier who was killed in Korea. Two years ago she failed in a mission intrusted to her, and she fled from Russia. She then entered the secret service of one of the Balkan states. I don’t know just what European power she now is serving, but I do know——”
Nick leaned forward and spoke with redoubled earnestness.