extraordinary still.

"You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort of
funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't
held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they come
aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer voluptuousness.
There's a reason."

"And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that reason to
be?"

"Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British Intelligence
Office are a long sight past finding out."

"It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the
_Assyrian_ is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares."

"Monsieur means--?" the Swiss enquired.

"I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe some one of us a
questionable character."

"German spy?"

"Possibly."

"Or an English traitor?"

"Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There is to-day no such
thing in England. Two years ago the supposition might have been plausible.