“The American leaned forward and put the big glass over the prints that Sir Henry had made with his fingers in the white dust on the mahogany table. `I think you know the answer to your question,’ he said. `The whorls of these prints are identical with those of the toe tracks.’

“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.