He was suddenly awakened to a more vivid interest when he became aware that it was now English that they were talking. There was a newcomer in the room, a man with a nasal carrying voice and a prodigious brogue.
“This, gentlemen,” he heard Williams say, “is Mr. O’Sheill, who has done so much good work for us and for the freedom of oppressed, starving, shackled Ireland, which we shall free. I may tell Mr. O’Sheill that the highest personages in the Fatherland weep bitter tears for Ireland’s wrongs.”
“That’s all right,” said the Sinn Feiner a trifle ungraciously, “but what’s behind yonder door?”
For answer one of the other men flung it open, turned up the lights and permitted Mr. O’Sheill to make his examination. Trent heard the man’s heavy tread as he descended the stairway and found at the bottom a locked door.
“You’ve got to be careful,” O’Sheill said when he rejoined Williams and the rest. “These damned secret service men are everywhere, they tell me.”
“That is why we have rented a private house,” one of the Germans declared. “At an hotel privacy is impossible. We have had our experiences.”
These scraps of conversation aroused Anthony Trent immediately. It required only a cursory knowledge of the affairs of the moment for a duller man than he to realize that he had come across the scent of one of those plots which were so hampering his government in their prosecution of the war. Very cautiously he crawled from his hiding place and made his silent way to the barely opened door.
O’Sheill was lighting a large cigar. His was a suspicious, dour face. Williams, urbane and florid, was very patient.
“That I do not tell you the names of my colleagues,” he said, “is of no moment. It is sufficient to say that you have the honor to be in the presence of one of the most illustrious personages in my country.” Here he bowed in the direction of a small, thin, dapper man who did not return the salutation.
“I came for the money,” said O’Sheill.