“Speed,” I said, “why on earth didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“My dear fellow, I supposed Jarras had told you; or that, if you didn’t know it, it did not concern us at all.”
“But it does concern—a person I know,” I said, quickly, thinking of poor Kelly Eyre. “And it explains a lot of things—or, rather, places them under a new light.”
“What light?”
“Well, for one thing, she has consistently lied to me. For another, I believe her to be hand-in-glove with Karl Marx and the French leaders—not Buckhurst, but the real leaders of the social revolt; not as a genuine disciple, but as a German agent, with orders to foment disorder of any kind which might tend to embarrass and weaken the French government in this crisis.”
“You’re inclined to believe that?” he asked, much interested.
“Yes, I am. France is full of German agents; the Tuileries was not exempt—you know it as well as I. Paris swarmed with spies of every kind, high and low in the social scale. The embassies were nests of spies; 316 every salon a breeding spot of intrigue; the foreign governments employed the grande dame as well as the grisette. Do you remember the military-balloon scandal?”
“Indistinctly.... Some poor devil gave a woman government papers.”
“Technically they were government papers, but he considered them his own. Well, the woman who received those papers is down-stairs.”
He gave a short whistle of astonishment.