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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
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