My fingers strayed toward my pocket
and my own revolver. Then I pried them away, temporarily, and took a
provisional seat.
"That's sensible," Franz von Blenheim approved me blandly. "Now, Miss
Falconer, you know what I'm here for, isn't that so? Just hand me those
papers and you'll be as free as air. I'll take myself off; you'll never
see me again probably. That's a fair bargain, isn't it? What do you
say?"
I was sitting close to the girl, so close that her soft furs brushed
me and I could feel the flutter of her breath against my cheek. At
Blenheim's proposition I glanced at her. She was measuring him steadily.
Then she looked at me, and her eyes seemed to hold some message that I
could not read.
"Perhaps, Miss Falconer," I interposed, "you have not quite grasped the
situation." I was sparring for time; she wanted to convey something to
me, I was sure. "It is rather complicated. This gentleman has turned
out to be a well-known agent of the kaiser. He was traveling on the _Re
d'Italia_, I gather, on a forged passport, and had helped himself to my
baggage as the most convenient way of smuggling some papers to the other
side.
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