It was never this man's fault to underrate an enemy, least of all
an unknown; and he entertained wholesome respect for Secret Service
operators--picked men, as a rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this
business, he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work--one
of those blind duels, desperate and grim affairs of masked combatants
feinting, thrusting, guarding in the dark, each with the other's sword ever
feeling for his throat, fighting for life itself and making his own rules
as the contest swayed.

But what was this Brooke girl doing in that galley? What conceivable motive
induced her to dabble those slender hands in the muck and blood of Secret
Service work?

Lanyard was fain to let that question rest. After all, it was no concern of
his. There she was, up to her pretty eyebrows in some dark, bad business;
and it was not for him to play the gratuitous ass, rush in unasked, and
seek to extricate her....

Through endless hours he sat brooding, vision blindly focussed upon the
misty, shimmering mystery of that night.

Ekstrom!... Slowly in his understanding intuition shaped the conviction
that it was Ekstrom whom he was fighting now, Ekstrom in the guise of one
of his creatures, some agent of the Prussian spy system who had contrived
to smuggle himself aboard this British steamship.

Out of those nine in the smoking room the previous night, then, he must
beware of one primarily, perhaps of more.

Four he was disposed, with reservations, to reckon negligible: Baron von