"If you wish, sir," he stated, "to explain why you are traveling with
cipher papers, Captain Cecchi and I will hear what you have to say."



CHAPTER VIII

WHAT A THIEF CAN DO

In sheer desperation I achieved a ghastly levity of demeanor.

"Please don't shoot me yet," I managed to request. "And if I sit down
and think for a moment, don't take it for a confession. Any innocent man
would be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up such loot."

I sat down in dizzy fashion, my judges watching me. Through my mind, in
a mad phantasmagoria, danced the series of events that had begun in the
St. Ives restaurant and was ending so dramatically in the salon of this
ship. Or perhaps the end had not yet arrived, I thought ironically. By
a slight effort of imagination I could conjure up a scene of the sort
rendered familiar by countless movie dramas--a lowering fortress wall,
myself standing against it, scornfully waving away a bandage, and drawn
up before me a highly efficient firing-squad.

To all intents and purposes I was a spy, caught red-handed; but with due
respect for circumstantial evidence, I did not mean to remain one long.
That part of it was too absurd. There must be a dozen ways out of it.
Come! The fact that so strange an experience had befallen me in a New
York hotel on the eve of my sailing could not be pure coincidence. There