Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/38

 "Why under cover?"

"Because one of the facts I've dug out is that the sweet-scented couple we spoke of a moment ago have got Anna Makaieff operating for them, and operating right here in this hotel."

"Makaieff?" cogitated Wilsnach. "That name's new to me."

"Well, it isn't to me—and I've had the dictaphone annunciator on the end of this jointed bamboo fishing-pole covering her window every night it was open."

"Where does she come from?"

"Her father was an Anglicized Pole and her mother a music-hall singer in Paris. She was trained for the stage herself, but married before she was twenty. Then she went to India with an English army-officer who knew nothing of her antecedents. There she hitched up with a Russian grand-duke and ran away to the Orient, where she was soon deserted, and had to live by her wits. Keudell found her there when he was buying up German coast-defense data, and took her to Vienna, where she learned two or three more languages, and how to dress, and a few of the tricks of the international spy trade. She was four years in Petrograd, and