hysteria. But by and by you'll change your minds, as we did, and know
the German secret service for what it is--the most competent thing, the
most widely spread, and pretty much the most dangerous, that the world
has to fight to-day."

"You don't mean," I inquired blankly, "that you believe me?"

It looks odd enough as I set it down. Ordinarily I expect my word to be
accepted; but then, as a general thing I don't suddenly discover that I
have been chaperoning a set of German code-dispatches across the seas.

"I mean," he corrected with truly British phlegm, "that I can't say
positively your story is untrue. Here's the case: Some one--probably
Franz von Blenheim--wants to send these papers home by way of Italy
and Switzerland. Your hotel manager tells him you are going to sail for
Naples; you are an American on your way to help the Allies; it's ten to
one that nobody will suspect you and that your baggage will go through
untouched. What does he do? He has the papers slipped into your wallet.
Then he sends a cable to some friend in Naples about a sick aunt, or
candles, or soap. And the friend translates the cable by a private code
and reads that you are coming and that he is to shadow you and learn
where you are stopping and loot your trunk the first night you spend
ashore!"

"I don't grasp," I commented dazedly; "why they should weave such
circles. Why not let one of their own agents bring over the papers?"

The lieutenant smiled a faint, cold, wintry smile.

"Spies," he informed me, "always think they are watched, and generally