“Have you any reason to doubt it?” the man inquired. “If it were otherwise, I must necessarily come as a traitor. I hope you will not entertain any such opinion of me as that. As long as you treat me fairly, you’ll find me absolutely on the square for you and your interests.”
“I hope so,” returned the woman in a tone of voice that could hardly be said to convey any significance other than the dictionary meaning of the words. “But let’s get down to business. What is this information that you come here primed with? Has it to do with the old subject?”
“Certainly, very intimately, and with nothing else.”
“In what way?” Mrs. Graham asked with more eagerness than she intended to disclose.
“Well, there are some spies in this neck of the woods.”
“Spies!” the woman exclaimed, betraying still more of the eagerness she was still struggling against.
“Yes spies. That’s exactly what they call themselves.”
“Who are they?—how do you know they are here to spy on me?”
“I overheard their plans. I got wind in a roundabout way, as a result of talk on the part of Mrs. Hutchins’ servants, that there was something doing, with Twin Lakes as a central point of interest. I suspected at once that your interests were involved; so I stole slyly, Willie Hawkshaw-like, up to their rendezvous one night and listened to some of them as they discussed their plans and—”
“Some of them,” Mrs. Graham interrupted. “How many are there?”