present manner, half self-assured, half respectfully apologetic—what grade in life did it fit?
“Well, here I am,” I said briefly as I struck a match.
“I’ve thought it over a good bit,” he went on, apparently in self-justification. “I don’t know how you will take it, but I’ll chance it just the same. If I don’t give you a hint, you don’t get a square deal. That’s my attitude. Did you ever hear of Franz von Blenheim, Mr. Bayne?”
“Eh?” The question seemed distinctly irrelevant—and yet where had I heard that name, not very long ago?
“The German secret-service agent. The best in the world, they say.” A sort of reluctant admiration showed in Van Blarcom’s face. “There isn’t any one that can get him; he does what he wants, goes where he likes—the United States, England, France, Russia—and always gets away safe. You’d think he was a conjurer to read what he does sometimes. A whole country will be looking for him, and he takes some one else’s passport, puts on a disguise, and good-by—he’s gone! That’s Franz von Blenheim. No; that’s just an outline of him. And on pretty good authority, he’s in Washington now.”
Mr. Van Blarcom, I reflected, was surely coming out of his shell; this was quite a monologue with which he was favoring me. It was dark now; our lights were flaring. Being in a friendly port’s shelter, we burned electricity to-night.
“You seem to know a whole lot about this fellow,” I remarked idly in the pause.
“Yes, I do.” He smiled a trifle grimly. “In fact, I once came near getting him; it would have made my fortune, too. But he slipped through my fingers at the last minute, and if I ever—You see, I’m in the secret-service myself, Mr. Bayne.”
I turned to stare at him.
“The United States service?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I nodded. All that had puzzled me was fairly clear in this new light. Not at all the type of the star agents, those marvelous beings who figure so romantically in fiction and on the boards, he was yet, I fancied, a good example of the ruck of
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