I've told you enough to satisfy any man's appetite for the abnormal,
haven't I?"

"Your defense, then," he summed it up, "is that under the protection of
a German management a German agent entered your room, opened your trunk,
concealed these papers in it, and repacked it. You believe that, eh?"

It sounded wild enough, I acknowledged gloomily as I sat staring at the
carpet with my elbows on my knees.

"You've been a pretty fool, a pretty fool, a pretty fool!" the refrain
sang itself unceasingly in my ears. I was disgusted with the episode,
more disgusted yet with my own role. Why was I lying, why making myself
by my present silence as well as by my former density the flagrant
confederate of a clever spy?

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh, what's the use?" I muttered. "No, of course I don't believe it, and
you won't either if you are sane. It is too ridiculous. I might as
well suggest that if the thief hadn't been gone when they arrived, the
manager and the detective would have shanghaied me, or the house doctor
drugged me with a hypodermic till the fellow could get away. Let's end
all this! I'm ready to go ashore if you want to take me. In your place
I know I should laugh at such a story; and I think that on general
principles I should order the man who told it shot."

"Not necessarily, Mr. Bayne," was the cool response of the Englishman.
"The trouble with you neutrals is that you laugh too much at German
spies. We warn you sometimes, and then you grin and say that it's