“You wanted to overhear their conversation—eh?”
“I wanted to ascertain what their game was,” answered the Queen’s messenger. “They eyed my despatch-box very curiously; and it was to me an extremely suspicious circumstance that although they joined the train at Berlin they did not enter my compartment until an hour later, when the express stopped to change engines.”
“You were alone?”
“Yes, and it was at night,” he answered, adding: “To me it was also a curious circumstance that only three days afterwards Kaye should become so deeply interested in her. I had never seen her from that night in Brussels until we had met in the train, but I’ve a good memory for faces. I can swear I was not mistaken.”
“You speak as though you suspected her,” I said, looking straight into his ruddy countenance, which had grown unusually serious while we had been speaking.
“Well, to tell the truth, I did suspect her,” he responded. “I didn’t half like the look of the man. He was well-dressed, but as you know I’ve always a sharp eye where my fellow-travellers are concerned, and I felt certain that there was something shady about him. They shifted about all night, and were constantly watching to see whether I had gone to sleep. But all their watching was without reward. Jack Anderson never sleeps while he has a crossed despatch upon him;” and he blew a cloud of smoke upward from his lips.
“But surely you don’t think that their intention was to steal your despatches?” I cried.
“They were welcome to the whole collection in the box,” he laughed. “They were only consular reports and necessary evils of that sort. What they wanted was the crossed despatch from Berlin that I had in my belt next my skin.”
“They made no attempt to get at it?”
“Yes, they did. That’s just where my suspicion was proved.”