enough, as the girl advanced.

"Please sit down," he said with a strong English accent. "I'll have to
see your passport if you will be so good." She took it from the bag she
carried, and he glanced at it perfunctorily.

"Your name is Esme Falconer?"

"Yes," she replied.

It was the name of the little Stuart princess, the daughter of Charles
the First, whose quaint, coiffed, blue-gowned portrait hangs in a dark,
gloomy gallery at Rome. I was subconsciously aware that I liked it
despite its strangeness, the while I wondered more actively if that
Paul Pry of a Van Blarcom had imparted to the ship's authorities the
suspicions he had shared with me.

"You are an American, Miss Falconer? You were born in the States?
You are going to Italy--and then home again?" The questions came in a
reassuringly mechanical fashion; the man was doing his duty, nothing
more.

"I may go also to France." Her voice was steady, but I saw that she had
clenched her hands beneath the table.

I glanced at Van Blarcom, to find him listening intently, his neck
thrust forward, his eyes almost protruding in his eagerness not to miss
a word. But there was to be nothing more.

"That is satisfactory, Miss Falconer," announced the Englishman; with a