Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/331

 An answer came back saying you were no longer with the Department."

"And I never even knew," cried Kestner, taking a deep breath.

"I made copies of a passport," she went on, "and was paid for it. Then I copied a signature on the official paper of the Austrian Embassy, and was paid for that. Then this man came to me and said I would have to go with him to Corfu, where I could work with him on duplicates of the Toulon fortifications. I refused to go. He tried to force me to go, but that same day I met Sadie Wimpel in the Piazza di Spagna. Through her I got a commission to make gallery copies for an English dealer."

"Is that all?" demanded Kestner. His face was now almost as colourless as the woman's.

"Yes," she said in the same flat monotone as before.

Kestner turned slowly about, confronting the man who still stood with the time-piece in his hand.

"You can put away that watch," he announced with a steely incisiveness. He did not speak loudly, but from his eyes shone a white-heat of indignation which could not be concealed.

"Why can I?" asked Watchel, still making a pretence of viewing him with bland and rounded eyes.

"Because I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life!" declared the American as he threw off his coat and tossed it into a corner of the room.