I sat down in dizzy fashion, my judges watching me.  Through my mind, in a mad phantasmagoria, danced the series of events that had begun in the St. Ives restaurant and was ending so dramatically in the salon of this ship.  Or perhaps the end had not yet arrived, I thought ironically.  By a slight effort of imagination I could conjure up a scene of the sort rendered familiar by countless movie dramas—­a lowering fortress wall, myself standing against it, scornfully waving away a bandage, and drawn up before me a highly efficient firing-squad.

To all intents and purposes I was a spy, caught red-handed; but with due respect for circumstantial evidence, I did not mean to remain one long.  That part of it was too absurd.  There must be a dozen ways out of it.  Come!  The fact that so strange an experience had befallen me in a New York hotel on the eve of my sailing could not be pure coincidence.  There lay the clue to the mystery.  Let me work it out.

And then, as my wits began groping, comprehension came to me—­a sudden comprehension that left me stunned and dazed:  The open trunk, the thief, the descent by the fire-escape, the girl’s calm denial, turning us from the suspected floor.  Yes, the girl!  Heavens, what a blind dolt I had been!  No wonder that Van Blarcom had felt moved to say a helping word for me, as for a congenital idiot not responsible for his acts!

“When you are ready—­” the lieutenant was remarking.  I pulled myself together as hastily as I could.

“First,” I began, with all the resolution I could muster, “I want to say that I am as much at a loss as you are about this thing.  I never set eyes upon those papers until this evening.  Why, man alive, I insisted on the search!  I asked you to examine the wallet!  Do you think I did all that to establish my own guilt?”

“We’ll keep to the point, please.”  His very politeness was ill omened.  “The papers were in your baggage.  Can you explain how they came there?”

“I am going to try,” I answered coolly.  “To begin with, I can vouch for it that they were not there two weeks ago when my man packed the trunk.  That I can swear to, for I glanced through the letters before handing him the wallet; and when he had finished packing I locked the trunk and went yachting for five days.”

“And your luggage?  Did it go with you?” queried the Englishman.

“No; it didn’t.  It remained in the baggage-room of my apartment house; but when I landed and found hotel quarters, I had it sent to me at the St. Ives.”

“So you stayed there!” He was eyeing me with ever-growing disfavor.  “You didn’t know, of course, that it was a nest of agents, a sort of rendezvous for hyphenates, and that the last spy we caught on this line had made it his headquarters in New York?”

“I did not,” I replied stiffly.  “But I can believe the worst of it.  Now, here’s what befell me there.”  I recounted my adventure briefly, beginning with the summons from restaurant to telephone.