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Page 37
"Then he laid the glass carefully down, sat back in his chair,
folded his arms and looked at Sir Henry.
"`Now,' he said, `will you kindly tell me why you have gone to
the trouble of manufacturing all these false evidences of a
crime?"'
The girl paused. There was intense silence in the drawing-room.
The aged man at the window had turned and was looking at her.
The face of the old woman seemed vague and uncertain.
The girl smiled.
"Then," she said, "the real, amazing miracle happened. Sir Henry
got on his feet, his big body tense, his face like iron, his
voice ringing.
"`I went to that trouble,' he said, `because I wished to
demonstrate - I wished to demonstrate beyond the possibility of
any error - that Mr. Arthur Meadows, the pretended American from
St. Paul, was in fact the celebrated criminologist, Karl Holweg
Leibnich, of Bonn, giving us the favor of his learned presence
while he signaled the German submarines off the east coast roads
with his high-powered motor lights.'"
Now there was utter silence in the drawing-room but for the low
of the Highland cattle and the singing of the birds outside
For the first time there came a little tremor in the girl's
voice.
"When Sir Henry doubted this American and asked me to go down and
make sure before he set a trap for him, I thought - I thought, if
Tony could risk his life for England, I could do that much."
At this moment a maid appeared in the doorway, the trim,
immaculate, typical English maid. "Tea is served, my lady," she
said.
The tall, fine old man crossed the room and offered his arm to
the girl with the exquisite, gracious manner with which once upon
a time he had offered it to a girlish queen at Windsor.
The ancient woman rose as if she would go out before them. Then
suddenly, at the door, she stepped aside for the girl to pass,
making the long, stooping, backward curtsy of the passed
Victorian era.
"After you, my dear," she said, "always!"
V. The Man in the Green Hat
"Alas, monsieur, in spite of our fine courtesies, the conception
of justice by one race must always seem outlandish to another!"
It was on the terrace of Sir Henry Marquis' villa at Cannes. The
members of the little party were in conversation over their
tobacco - the Englishman, with his brier-root pipe; the American
Justice, with a Havana cigar; and the aged Italian, with his
cigarette. The last was speaking.
He was a very old man, but he gave one the impression of
incredible, preposterous age. He was bald; he had neither
eyebrows nor eyelashes. A wiry mustache, yellow with nicotine,
alone remained. Great wrinkles lay below the eyes and along the
jaw, under a skin stretched like parchment over the bony
protuberances of the face.
These things established the aspect of old age; but it was the
man's expression and manner that gave one the sense of
incalculable antiquity. The eyes seemed to look out from a
window, where the man behind them had sat watching the human race
from the beginning. And his manners had the completion of one
whose experience of life is comprehensive and finished.
"It seems strange to you, monsieur" - he was addressing, in
French, the American Justice - "that we should put our prisoners
into an iron cage, as beasts are exhibited in a circus. You are
shocked at that. It strikes you as the crudity of a race not
quite civilized.
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