Her fingers left the keys.  She laid her hands upon the table in front of her.  He drew a little nearer.  She covered over the sheets of paper with which she was surrounded with a pad of blotting-paper.  He pointed suddenly to them.

“Why do you do that?” he demanded.  “What is there in your work that you are afraid I might see?”

She answered him without hesitation.

“These are private papers of Mr. Fentolin’s.  No one has any business to see them.  No one has any business to enter this room.  Why are you here?”

“I came to the Hall to find Miss Fentolin,” he replied.  “I heard the click of your typewriter.  I came to you, I suppose I should say, on impulse.”

Her eyes rested upon his, filled with a cold and questioning light.

“There’s an impression up in London,” Hamel went on, “that Mr. Fentolin has been interfering by means of his wireless in affairs which don’t concern him, and giving away valuable information.  This man Dunster’s disappearance is as yet unexplained.  I feel myself justified in making certain investigations, and among the first of them I should like you to tell me exactly the nature of the work for which Mr. Fentolin finds a secretary necessary?”

She glanced towards the bell.  He moved to the edge of the table as though to intercept her.

“In any ordinary case,” he continued, “I would not ask you to betray your employer’s confidence.  As things are, I think I am justified.  You are English, are you not?  You realise, I suppose, that the country is on the brink of war?”

She looked at him from the depths of her still, lusterless eyes.

“You must be a very foolish person,” she remarked, “if you expect to obtain information in this manner.”

“Perhaps I am,” he confessed, “but my folly has brought me to you, and you can give me the information if you will.”

“Where is Mr. Fentolin?” she asked.

“Down at the Tower,” he replied.  “I left him there.  He sent me up to see Miss Fentolin.  I was looking for her when the click of your typewriter reminded me of other things.”

She turned composedly back to her work.

“I think,” she said, “that you had better go and find Miss Fentolin.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!  You can’t think I have risked giving myself away to you for nothing?  I mean to search this room, to read the papers which you are typing.”

She glanced around her a little contemptuously.

“You are welcome,” she assured him.  “Pray proceed.”

They exchanged the glances of duelists.  Her plain black frock was buttoned up to her throat.  Her colourless face seemed set in exact and expressionless lines.  Her eyes were like windows of glass.  He felt only their scrutiny; nothing of the reason for it, or of the thoughts which stirred behind in her brain.  There was nothing about her attitude which seemed in any way threatening, yet he had the feeling that in this interview it was she who possessed the upper hand.