lean, muscular young man with a shrewd tanned face in which his eyes showed oddly blue, and he half rose, civilly enough, as the girl advanced.
“Please sit down,” he said with a strong English accent. “I’ll have to see your passport if you will be so good.” She took it from the bag she carried, and he glanced at it perfunctorily.
“Your name is Esme Falconer?”
“Yes,” she replied.
It was the name of the little Stuart princess, the daughter of Charles the First, whose quaint, coiffed, blue-gowned portrait hangs in a dark, gloomy gallery at Rome. I was subconsciously aware that I liked it despite its strangeness, the while I wondered more actively if that Paul Pry of a Van Blarcom had imparted to the ship’s authorities the suspicions he had shared with me.
“You are an American, Miss Falconer? You were born in the States? You are going to Italy—and then home again?” The questions came in a reassuringly mechanical fashion; the man was doing his duty, nothing more.
“I may go also to France.” Her voice was steady, but I saw that she had clenched her hands beneath the table.
I glanced at Van Blarcom, to find him listening intently, his neck thrust forward, his eyes almost protruding in his eagerness not to miss a word. But there was to be nothing more.
“That is satisfactory, Miss Falconer,” announced the Englishman; with a little sigh of relief, she stood back against the wall.
“If you please,” said the officer to me in another tone.
As I came forward, his eyes ran over me from head to foot. So did Captain Cecchi’s; but I hardly noticed; these uniforms, these formalities, these war precautions, were like a dash of comic opera. I was not taking them seriously in the least. The Britisher gestured me toward a seat, but it seemed superfluous for so brief an interview, and I remained standing with my hands resting on a chair.
“I’ll have your passport!” There was something curt in his manner. “Ah! And your name is—?”
“My name is Devereux Bayne.”
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