Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/204



sat staring at her as she slowly undid that innocent-looking oblong parcel covered with its green baize wrapper. His pulse quickened a little as he caught the glint of polished metal. There were eight plates, he could see, each padded by an oblong of red blotting-paper trimmed to the size of the plate itself.

Maura Lambert looked up and saw the Secret Agent's eyes studying the sheets of metal that lay in her lap.

"It's only natural for you not to believe me any more. I can't even ask you to accept my word. But these," she went on, as she touched the plates with her finger-tips, "you can recognise at a glance. I want you to take them. That will show you I am being sincere!"

She was holding them out to him, but he did not reach for them. Yet the irony of the situation did not escape him. Here he sat face to face with the cleverest counterfeiter in all Europe, the woman he had pursued half way round the world, and she of her own free will was handing over to him the fateful pieces of engraved metal which had once stood the end and object of all that pursuit. Life, he told himself, did not resolve itself into theatricalities like this! Somewhere at the core of all that carefully carpentered structure was the canker of untruth.