or expects that German agents today are elderly professors who say, 'How vos you?' and 'Ja, ja!''
'My dear fellow,' said Flinders sapiently, 'every American who came to London before the war was on his guard against a pleasant-spoken gentleman who would accost him with, 'Say, stranger, does this happen to be your wallet lying around here, on the sidewalk?' and yet an unending procession of astute, long-headed citizens met him, exactly as described, year after year, and handed over their five hundred or five thousand pounds on a tale that would have made a common or Michaelmas goose blush to be caught listening to.'
'It's a curious fact, admitted Carrados thoughtfully. 'And this Hulse?'
'Oh, he's quite an agreeable chap, you'll find. He may know a trifle more than you and be a little wider awake and see further through a brick wall and so on, but he won't hurt your feelings about it. Well, will you do it for us?'
'Certainly,' replied Carrados. 'What is it, by the way?'
Flinders laughed his apologies and explained more precisely.
'Hulse has been over here a month now, and it may be another month before the details come through which he will take on to Paris. Then he will certainly have documents of very special importance that he must carry about with him. Well, in the meanwhile, of course, he is entertained and may pal up with anyone or get himself into Lord knows what. We can't keep him here under lock and key or expect him to make a report of every fellow he has a drink with or every girl he meets.'
'Quite so,' nodded the blind man.
'Actually, we have been asked to take precautions. It isn't quite a case for the C.I.D. – not at this stage, that is to say. So if I introduce him to you and you fix up an evening for him or something of the sort and find out where his tastes lie, and – and, in fact, keep a general shepherding eye upon him-' He broke off abruptly, and Carrados divined that he had reddened furiously and was kicking himself in spirit. The blind man raised a deprecating hand.
'Why should you think that so neat a compliment would pain me, Flinders?' he asked quietly. 'Now if you had questioned the genuineness of some of my favorite tetradrachms I might have had reason to be annoyed. As it is, yes, I will gladly keep a general shepherding ear on J. Beringer as long as may be needful.'
'That's curious,' said Flinders looking up quickly. 'I didn't think that I had mentioned his front name.'
'I don't think that you have,' agreed Carrados.
'Then how-? Had you heard of him before?'
'You don't give an amateur conjurer much chance,' replied the other whimsically. 'When you brought me to this chair I found a table by me, and happening to rest a hand on it my fingers had 'read' a line of writing before I realized it – just as your glance might as unconsciously do,' and he held up an envelope addressed to Hulse.
'That is about the limit,' exclaimed Flinders with some emphasis. 'Do you know, Carrados, if I hadn't always led a very blameless life I should be afraid to have you around the place.'
Thus it came about that the introduction was made and in due course the two callers left together.
'You'll see Mr. Carrados down, won't you?' Flinders had asked, and, slightly puzzled but not disposed to question English ways, Hulse had assented. In the passage Carrados laid a light hand on his companion's arm. Through some subtle perception he read Hulse's mild surprise.
'By the way, I don't think that Flinders mentioned my infirmity,' he remarked. 'This part of the building is new to me and I happen to be quite blind.'
'You astonish me,' declared Hulse, and he had to be assured that the statement was literally exact. 'You don't seem to miss much by it, Mr. Carrados. Ever happen to hear of Laura Bridgman?'
'Oh, yes,' replied Carrados. 'She was one of your star cases. But Laura Bridgman's attainments really were wonderful. She was also deaf and dumb, if you remember.'
'That is so,' assented Hulse. 'My people come from New Hampshire not far from Laura's home, and my mother had some of her needlework framed as though it was a picture. That's how I come to know of her, I reckon.'
They had reached the street meanwhile and Carrados heard the door of his waiting car opened to receive him.
'I'm going on to my club now to lunch,' he remarked with his hand still on his companion's arm. 'Of course we only have a wartime menu, but if you would keep me company you would be acting the Good Samaritan,' and Beringer Hulse, who was out to see as much as possible of England, France and Berlin within the time – perhaps, also, not uninfluenced by the appearance of the rather sumptuous vehicle – did not refuse.
'Vurry kind of you to put it in that way, Mr. Carrados,' he said, in his slightly business-like, easy style. 'Why, certainly I will.'
During the following weeks Carrados continued to make himself very useful to the visitor, and Hulse did not find his stay in London any less agreeably varied thereby. He had a few other friends – acquaintances rather – he had occasion now and then to mention, but they, one might infer, were either not quite so expansive in their range of hospitality or so pressing for his company. The only one for whom he had ever to excuse himself was a Mr. Darragh, who appeared to have a house in Densham Gardens (he was a little shrewdly curious as to what might be inferred of the status of a man who lived in Densham Gardens), and, well, yes, there was Darragh's sister, Violet. Carrados began to take a private interest in the Darragh household, but there was little to be learned beyond the fact that the house was let furnished to the occupant from month to month. Even during the complexities of war that fact alone could not be regarded as particularly incriminating.
There came an evening when Hulse, having an appointment to dine with Carrados and to escort him to a theater afterwards, presented himself in a mixed state of elation and remorse. His number had come through at last, he explained, and he was to leave for Paris in the morning. Carrados had been most awfully, most frightfully- Hulse became quite touchingly incoherent in his anxiety to impress upon the blind man the fullness of the gratitude he felt, but, all the same, he had come to ask whether he might cry off for the evening. There was no need to inquire the cause. Carrados raised an accusing finger and pointed to the little bunch of violets with which the impressionable young man had adorned his buttonhole.
'Why, yes, to some extent,' admitted Hulse, with a facile return to his ingenuous, easy way. 'I happened to see Miss Darragh down town this afternoon. There's a man they know whom I've been crazy to meet for weeks, a Jap who has the whole ju-jitsu business at his fingerends. Best ju-jitsuist out of Japan, Darragh says. Mighty useful thing, ju-jitsu, nowadays, Carrados.'
'At any time, indeed,' conceded Carrados. 'And he will be there tonight?'
'Certain. They've tried to fix it up for me half-a-dozen times before, but this Kuromi could never fit it in. Of course this will be the only chance.'
'True!' agreed the blind man, rather absentmindedly. 'Your last night here.'
'I don't say that in any case I should not have liked to see Violet – Miss Darragh – again before I went, but I wouldn't have gone back on an arranged thing for 'Now this ju-jitsu that,' continued Hulse virtuously. 'I look on more in the light of business.'
'Rather a rough-and-tumble business one would think,' suggested Carrados. 'Nothing likely to drop out of your pockets in the process and get lost?'
Hulse's face displayed a rather more superior smile than he would have permitted himself had his friend been liable to see it and be snubbed thereby.
'I know what you mean, of course,' he replied, getting up and going to the blind man's chair, 'but don't you worry about me, Father William. Just put your hand to my breast pocket.'
'Sewn up,' commented Carrados, touching the indicated spot on his guest's jacket.
'Sewn up: that's it; and since I've had any important papers on me it always has been sewn up, no matter how often I change. No fear of anything dropping out now – or being lifted out, eh? No,
'What time do you want to get there?'
'Darragh's? Well, I left that open. Of course I couldn't promise until I had seen you. Anyway, not until after dinner, I said.'
'That makes it quite simple, then,' declared Carrados. 'Stay and have dinner here, and afterwards we will go on to Darragh's together instead of going to the theater.'
