“You make a terrible mistake to involve yourself in this affair. If you are not paid to do it—if you are not interested from patriotic motives—you had better keep aloof.”
“But it’s too late. I am mixed up in it—whatever it may mean. Why not tell me, Scheherazade?”
His humorous badinage seemed only to make her more serious.
“Mr. Neeland,” she said quietly, “if you really are what you say you are, it is a dangerous and silly thing that you have done tonight.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t consider it so tragically. I’m enjoying it all immensely.”
“Do you consider it a comedy when a woman tries to kill you?”
“Maybe you are fond of murder, gentle lady.”
“Your sense of humour seems a trifle perverted. I am more serious than I ever was in my life. And I tell you very solemnly that you’ll be killed if you try to 178 take those papers to Paris. Listen!”—she laid one hand lightly on his arm—“Why should you involve yourself—you, an American? This matter is no concern of yours––”
“What matter?”
“The matter concerning those papers. I tell you it does not concern you; it is none of your business. Let me be frank with you: the papers are of importance to a foreign government—to the German Government. And in no way do they threaten your people or your country’s welfare. Why, then, do you interfere? Why do you use violence toward an agent of a foreign and friendly government?”