“I’ll think about it,” Judy replied soberly.
They left the place to wander slowly back toward the school. As they crossed the long bridge, the dark waters of the river sweeping beneath them seemed to whisper of the thousands who had swarmed its banks since time began.
“Do you know,” said Mary, “I am obsessed with a strange notion that this black-robed woman who shot at me tonight is a French woman I saw at the port we reached after we had flown the Atlantic.”
“In North Africa!” Judy exclaimed. “That’s impossible.”
“Yes, I suppose so but I seem to have been haunted by women in black all the way.”
“That’s possible and it is also possible that they were all spies.”
“But they were all so very much alike,” Mary insisted.
“That,” said Judy, “is even probable. I have a friend, here in India, who is a counter-spy. He told me once that women spies were all very much alike, that is, the successful ones were. They are smart, he says, keen in their own way, usually well educated and all that. Their smartness is like the smartness of a dagger, if you can say a dagger is smart.” Judy paused to reflect.
“Smart as a dagger,” Mary murmured. “That does sound a little strange.”
“Smart and beautiful,” said Judy. “I have a friend who has a collection of what he calls ‘beautiful daggers.’ They are beautiful too, hilts of gold, some with pearls set in silver, mother-of-pearl handles and a lot more. But they all have one thing in common, an ugly, dangerous blade. Women spies are alike, I suppose, in very much the same way. That’s why this one seems like the others.”