“It’s all right. Don’t be afraid, my child. You’re quite safe.”
Her breath came more normally, and the colour was returning to her cheeks. Sir James looked at Tuppence quizzically.
“So you’re not dead, Miss Tuppence, any more than that Tommy boy of yours was!”
“The Young Adventurers take a lot of killing,” boasted Tuppence.
“So it seems,” said Sir James dryly. “Am I right in thinking that the joint venture has ended in success, and that this”–he turned to the girl on the couch–“is Miss Jane Finn?”
Jane sat up.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I am Jane Finn. I have a lot to tell you.”
“When you are stronger—-”
“No–now!” Her voice rose a little. “I shall feel safer when I have told everything.”
“As you please,” said the lawyer.
He sat down in one of the big arm-chairs facing the couch. In a low voice Jane began her story.
“I came over on the Lusitania to take up a post in Paris. I was fearfully keen about the war, and just dying to help somehow or other. I had been studying French, and my teacher said they were wanting help in a hospital in Paris, so I wrote and offered my services, and they were accepted. I hadn’t got any folk of my own, so it made it easy to arrange things.
“When the Lusitania was torpedoed, a man came up to me. I’d noticed him more than once–and I’d figured it out in my own mind that he was afraid of somebody or something. He asked me if I was a patriotic American, and told me he was carrying papers which were just life or death to the Allies. He asked me to take charge of them. I was to watch for an advertisement in the Times. If it didn’t appear, I was to take them to the American Ambassador.
“Most of what followed seems like a nightmare still. I see it in my dreams sometimes…. I’ll hurry over that part. Mr. Danvers had told me to watch out. He might have been shadowed from New York, but he didn’t think so. At first I had no suspicions, but on the boat to Holyhead I began to get uneasy. There was one woman who had been very keen to look after me, and chum up with me generally–a Mrs. Vandemeyer. At first I’d been only grateful to her for being so kind to me; but all the time I felt there was something about her I didn’t like, and on the Irish boat I saw her talking to some queer-looking men, and from the way they looked I saw that they were talking about me. I remembered that she’d been quite near me on the Lusitania when Mr. Danvers gave me the packet, and before that she’d tried to talk to him once or twice. I began to get scared, but I didn’t quite see what to do.
“I had a wild idea of stopping at Holyhead, and not going on to London that day, but I soon saw that that would be plumb foolishness. The only thing was to act as though I’d noticed nothing, and hope for the best. I couldn’t see how they could get me if I was on my guard. One thing I’d done already as a precaution–ripped open the oilskin packet and substituted blank paper, and then sewn it up again. So, if anyone did manage to rob me of it, it wouldn’t matter.
“What to do with the real thing worried me no end. Finally I opened it out flat–there were only two sheets–and laid it between two of the advertisement pages of a magazine. I stuck the two pages together round the edge with some gum off an envelope. I carried the magazine carelessly stuffed into the pocket of my ulster.
“At Holyhead I tried to get into a carriage with people that looked all right, but in a queer way there seemed always to be a crowd round me shoving and pushing me just the way I didn’t want to go. There was something uncanny and frightening about it. In the end I found myself in a carriage with Mrs. Vandemeyer after all. I went out into the corridor, but all the other carriages were full, so I had to go back and sit down. I consoled myself with the thought that there were other people in the carriage–there was quite a nice-looking man and his wife sitting just opposite. So I felt almost happy about it until just outside London. I had leaned back and closed my eyes. I guess they thought I was asleep, but my eyes weren’t quite shut, and suddenly I saw the nice-looking man get something out of his bag and hand it to Mrs. Vandemeyer, and as he did so he WINKED….