“Any court-martial to-day would turn me over to a firing squad!”
“You see,” said Barres, turning to Westmore, “this is a much more serious matter than a case of ordinary blackmail.”
“Why not go to our own Secret Service authorities and lay the entire business before them?” asked Westmore excitedly.
But Thessalie shook her head:
“The evidence against me in Paris is overwhelming. My dossier alone, as it now stands, would surely condemn me without corroborative evidence. Your people here would never believe in me if the French Government forwarded to them a copy of my dossier from the secret archives in Paris. As for my own Government——” She merely shrugged.
Barres, much troubled, glanced from Thessalie to Westmore.
“It’s rather a rotten situation,” he said. “There must be, of course, some sensible way to tackle it, 207 though I don’t quite see it yet. But one thing is very plain to me: Thessa ought to remain here with us for the present. Don’t you think so, Jim?”
“How can I, Garry?” she asked. “You have only one room, and I couldn’t turn you out——”
“I can arrange that,” interposed Westmore, turning eagerly to Barres with a significant gesture toward the door at the end of the studio. “There’s the solution, isn’t it?”
“Certainly,” agreed Barres; and to Thessalie, in explanation: “Westmore’s two bedrooms adjoin my studio—beyond that wall. We have merely to unlock those folding doors and throw his apartment into mine, making one long suite of rooms. Then you may have my room and I’ll take his spare room.”