"He has."
"I understand."
"And that is why I am worrying about Gray. They'd not hesitate to kill him if they thought there was a chance that he had any of the papers."
Warner said:
"They couldn't have killed him. A crime on the public highway cannot remain undiscovered very long."
Halkett sat thoughtfully stroking Ariadne. Presently he looked up with a slight smile.
"Well, what are you going to do with the girl Philippa?" he inquired.
"Now, what do you think of a situation like this?" demanded Warner, half laughing, half vexed. "I told her to go home. She positively refuses. You can't blame the child. The dirty business there has disgusted her. This seems to be a final revolt. But--what would _you_ do if a young girl wished herself on _you_?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Halkett, intensely amused.
Warner reddened.
"I haven't either," he said. "All I can think of is to use her as a model--give her a small salary until she finds something to do."
"Are you going to use her for a model?"
"I suppose so, until somebody comes after her to take her back."
"Suppose nobody comes?" suggested Halkett mischievously.
"Well, I'm not going to adopt her, that's certain," insisted the other. "Poor little thing!" he added. "--Her instincts seem to be decent. Who could blame a young girl for sickening of such a life and cutting away on her own hook? That's a rotten joint, that Cabaret de Biribi. And as for that old villain, Wildresse, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he were playing the dirty game from both ends--German and French. Informers are often traitors."
"Very frequently."
"Spies also have that reputation, I believe--except in romantic fiction," said Warner.
"They usually deserve it," returned Halkett. "Generally speaking, they are a scum recruited from low pubs and brothels. Rarely does any reputable person enter that profession except in line of military duty or in time of war.
"Servants, waiters, chauffeurs, those are the most respectable classes of secret agents. But the demi-monde and their hangers-on furnish the majority of those popularly supposed to represent people of position who play the role of international spy. They are a rummy lot, Warner.
"It is very, very seldom in Occidental drawing-rooms that such practices prevail. A woman of position very rarely becomes a paid agent of that sort. Diplomats and attaches who are pumped and victimized are usually the dupes of socially disreputable people. Society in England and in Western Europe rarely entertains such a favorite of fiction as a paid Government spy; nor are such people very often recruited from its ranks. East of the Danube it is different."
They sat for a while smoking, Halkett lavishing endearments upon Ariadne who never failed to respond, Warner musing on what Halkett had said and wondering exactly what duties the Military Intelligence Department of any Government might include.
No doubt, like the Government, it employs spies, and, like the Government, never admits the fact.
For among all outcasts so vitally necessary to autocracy and militarism, the spy is the most pitiable: in time of peace no authority admits employing him; in time of war, his fate, if taken, is as certain as that his own Government will disown him. Eternally repudiated, whether of respectable or disreputable antecedents, honest or otherwise, patriotic or mercenary, the world has only one opinion to express concerning spies, although it often cackles over their adventures and snivels over their fate.
Perhaps Halkett was musing on these things, for presently he took his pipe from his mouth and said:
"To my knowledge, we British never employ spies in America. Your Government, I know, never employs them anywhere in time of peace. All other Governments do. Europe swarms with them. If I were in Germany today, I'd be considered a spy. They'd follow me about and lock me up on the first excuse--or without any excuse at all. And if we chanced to be at war with Germany, and I were caught, they'd certainly shoot me because I have recovered stolen property."
"They'd execute you because you are not in uniform?"
"Certainly. I'd not stand a ghost of a chance. So I shall be rather glad that I'm in France when war comes."
"You are so certain it is coming?"
"Absolutely, my dear fellow. Probably it will be declared tomorrow."
"I cannot believe it, Halkett."
"I can scarcely believe it myself. But--I know it is coming. And it is coming from the north."
"Through _Belgium_?"
"Exactly."
"And the treaty?"
"I have already told you how Germany regards such agreements. She'll kill that treaty with just as much emotion as she'd experience in assassinating a fly. It's a rotten outlook, Warner. The eleventh hour has passed."
They smoked for a while in silence, then:
"Where is your little protegee?" asked Halkett, making an effort to shake off his depression.
"Linette is making her comfortable. When Madame Arlon returns from Nancy I shall tell her to look out for the child. She's in her room, unpacking, I suppose."
"Did she even bring her boxes?" asked the Englishman, greatly amused.
"Yes, she did. And I don't know what on earth she intends to do for a living when I go back to Paris. I'm sorry for her, but she can't expect me to travel about France with her----"
He checked himself abruptly; Halkett also looked up.
The girl Philippa had entered the further end of the garden.
She came slowly forward through the rosy evening light, straight and slim in her girlish gown of white, unrelieved except by a touch or two of black, and by the coppery splendor of her hair.
She halted in the path a little way from the arbor, evidently aware that somebody was within.
"Are you there, Monsieur Warner?" she asked in her sweet, childish voice.
He got up with a glance of resignation at Halkett, and went to meet her. Halkett, from the arbor, noticed the expression of her face when Warner appeared, and he continued to observe the girl with curious attention.
She had instinctively laid her hands in Warner's, detaining him naively, and looking up into his face with an honesty too transparent to mistake.
"I miss you very much," she said, "even for a few minutes. I hastened my toilet to rejoin you."
"That is very sweet of you, Philippa----" He didn't know what else to say; felt the embarrassment warm on his face--chagrin, shyness, something of both, perhaps--and a rather helpless feeling that he was acquiescing in an understanding which already was making him very uneasy.
"Come in to the arbor," he said. "Mr. Halkett is there."
She slipped her arm through his. Halkett saw both their faces as they approached, and, watching Warner for a moment, he felt inclined to laugh. But in this young girl's eyes there was something that checked his amusement. A man does not laugh at the happy and serious eyes of childhood.
So he rose and paid his respects to Philippa with pleasant formality; she seated herself between the two men.
The last pink rays of the sun fell across the little iron table, flooding the garden with an enchanted light: already the evening perfume of clove pinks had become exquisitely apparent; a belated bumblebee blundered out of the reseda and, rising high in the calm air, steered his bullet flight into the west. Ariadne, on the table, stretched herself, yawned, and looked about her, now thoroughly awake for the rest of the night.
"_Minette!_" murmured Philippa, caressing her and laying her cheek against the soft fur.
"You are sunburned," remarked Halkett.
"And badly freckled, Monsieur----" She looked mischievously at Warner, laughed at their secret agreement concerning cosmetics, then turned again to Halkett:
"You have heard, I suppose, of the happy understanding between Mr. Warner and me?"
"I think so," said Halkett, subduing an inclination to laugh.
"The future, for me, is entirely secure," continued Philippa happily. "I am permitted to assist Mr. Warner in his art. It is a very wonderful future, Mr. Halkett, destined for me without doubt by God." She added, half to herself: "And a lifetime on my knees would be too short a time to thank Him in."
Both men became silent and constrained, Warner feeling more helpless than ever in the face of such tranquil confidence; Halkett remembering what Warner had once said about the soul of Philippa--but still pleasantly and gently inclined to skepticism concerning this _fille de cabaret_.
Philippa, leaning forward on the table between them, joined her slender hands and looked at Warner.
"It is pleasant to be accepted as a friend by such men as you are," she said thoughtfully.... "I have met other gentlemen of your station in life, now and then. But their attitude toward me has been different from yours.... I once supposed that, in a cabaret, all men resembled each other where women were concerned. I have been very happily mistaken."
Warner said:
"A man scarcely expects to see more than one sort of woman in a cabaret."
"Yet, you were not astonished to see me, were you?"
"Yes," he said, "I was astonished."
"You did not seem to be."