With this he stopped for breath as well, and momentarily was silent, his faint, twisted smile testifying to self-consciousness; but presently, seeing that she didn’t offer to interrupt, but continued to give him her attention so exclusively that it had the effect of fascination, he stumbled on, at first less confidently.
“When I woke up it was as if, without my will, I had been thinking all this out in my sleep. I saw myself for the first time clearly, as I have been ever since I can remember—a crook, thoughtless, vain, rapacious, ruthless, skulking in shadows and thinking myself an amazingly fine fellow because, between coups, I would play the gentleman a bit, venture into the light and swagger in the haunts of the gratin! In my poor, perverted brain I thought there was something fine and thrilling and romantic in the career of a great criminal and myself a wonderful figure—an enemy of society!”
“Why do you say this to me?” she demanded abruptly, out of a phase of profound thoughtfulness.
He lifted an apologetic shoulder. “Because, I fancy, I’m no longer self-sufficient. I was all of that, twenty-four hours ago; but now I’m as lonesome as a lost child in a dark forest. I haven’t a friend in the world. I’m like a stray pup, grovelling for sympathy. And you are unfortunate enough to be the only person I can declare myself to. It’s going to be a fight—I know that too well!—and without something outside myself to struggle toward, I’ll be heavily handicapped. But if …” He faltered, with a look of wistful earnestness. “If I thought that you, perhaps, were a little interested, that I had your faith to respect and cherish … if I dared hope that you’d be glad to know I had won out against odds, it would mean a great deal to me, it might mean my salvation!”
Watching her narrowly, hanging upon her decision with the anxiety of a man proscribed and hoping against hope for pardon, he saw her eyes cloud and shift from his, her lips parted but hesitant; and before she could speak, hastily interposed:
“Please don’t say anything yet. First let me demonstrate my sincerity. So far I’ve done nothing to persuade you but—talk and talk and talk! Give me a chance to prove I mean what I say.”
“How”—she enunciated only with visible effort and no longer met his appeal with an open countenance—“how can you do that?”
“In the long run, by establishing myself in some honest way of life, however modest; but now, and principally, by making reparation for at least one crime I’ve committed that’s not irreparable.”
He caught her quick glance of enquiry, and met it with a confident nod as he placed between them the morocco-bound jewel-case.
“In London, yesterday,” he said quietly, “I brought off two big coups. One was deliberate, the other the inspiration of a moment. The one I’d planned for months was the theft of the Omber jewels—here.”
He tapped the case and resumed in the same manner: “The other job needs a diagram: Not long ago a Frenchman named Huysman, living in Tours, was mysteriously murdered—a poor inventor, who had starved himself to perfect a stabilizator, an attachment to render aeroplanes practically foolproof. His final trials created a sensation and he was on the eve of selling his invention to the Government when he was killed and his plans stolen. Circumstantial evidence pointed to an international spy named Ekstrom—Adolph Ekstrom, once Chief of the Aviation Corps of the German Army, cashiered for general blackguardism with a suspicion of treason to boot. However, Ekstrom kept out of sight; and presently the plans turned up in the German War Office. That was a big thing for Germany; already supreme with her dirigibles, the acquisition of the Huysman stabilizator promised her ten years’ lead over the world in the field of aeroplanes. … Now yesterday Ekstrom came to the surface in London with those selfsame plans to sell to England. Chance threw him my way, and he mistook me for the man he’d expected to meet—Downing Street’s secret agent. Well—no matter how—I got the plans from him and brought them over with me, meaning to turn them over to France, to whom by rights they belong.”
“Without consideration?” the girl enquired shrewdly.
“Not exactly. I had meant to make no profit of the affair—I’m a bit squeamish about tainted money!—but under present conditions, if France insists on rewarding me with safe conduct out of the country, I shan’t refuse it. … Do you approve?”
She nodded earnestly: “It would be worse than criminal to return them to Ekstrom. …”
“That’s
