Hardened by this time, I brazenly endured the exhibition of my pajamas, not turning a hair when they were held up and shaken out before the attentive crowd.  In a similar spirit I bore the examination of my coats and trousers, the rummaging of my vests, the investigation of my hats.  “Courage!” I told myself.  “Nothing in the world is endless.”  Indeed, the last garment was now being lifted, revealing nothing beneath it save a leather wallet carefully tied.

“Just look through that, will you?” I requested with chilling sarcasm.  “Otherwise you may get to thinking later that I had a note for the kaiser there.  In point of fact, those are simply some letters of introduction that I am taking to—­” I broke off abruptly.  “Good Lord deliver us!” I blankly exclaimed.  “What’s that?”

The lieutenant, complying with my request, had unbound the wallet and was flirting out its contents in fan-like fashion like a hand of cards.  I saw the imposing army of letters presented me by Dunny, who knows everybody, headed by one to his old friend, the American ambassador to France.  So far, so good.  But beneath them, with a sickening sense of being in a bad dream, I beheld a thin sheaf of papers, neatly folded, bound with red tape and sealed with bright red wax,—­an object which, to my certain knowledge, had no more business among my belongings than the knives and plates that the conjurer snatches from the surrounding atmosphere, or the hen which he evolves, clucking, from an erstwhile empty sleeve.

Standing there with the impersonal calm of utter helplessness, I watched the Britisher break the seal and unfold the sheets.  They were thin and they were many and they were covered with closely jotted hieroglyphics, row upon row.  But the sphinx-like quality of the contents afforded me no gleam of hope.  If they had proclaimed as much in the plainest English printing, I could have been no surer that they were the papers of Franz von Blenheim; nor, as I learned a good while afterward, was I mistaken in the belief.

I was vaguely aware that the spectators were being ordered from the salon.  Captain Cecchi’s eyes were dark stilettos; the gaze of the Englishman was like a narrow flash of blue steel.  He was going to say something.  I waited apathetically.  Then the words came, falling like icicles in the deadness of the hush.

“If you wish, sir,” he stated, “to explain why you are traveling with cipher papers, Captain Cecchi and I will hear what you have to say.”

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT A THIEF CAN DO

In sheer desperation I achieved a ghastly levity of demeanor.

“Please don’t shoot me yet,” I managed to request.  “And if I sit down and think for a moment, don’t take it for a confession.  Any innocent man would be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up such loot.”