Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/255

 from Hildebrand's was sensible only of a passing flash of curiosity, made a bit more piquant, perhaps, by a little dart of jealousy, hardly comprehended as such. A hotel keeper warns an officer in the Gibraltar garrison that he has been denounced, but in the same message adjures him to "play your own game." That was the single compelling fact. Jane Gerson flushed—in anger, or was it through guilt?—when she found her lips framing the word "spy"!

Now she understood why General Crandall had put her on the grill—why he, informed, had leaped to the significance of the gift of roses and deduced her previous acquaintance with their donor. Her host was not, after all, the possessor of magical powers of mind reading. He was, instead, just the sober, conscientious protector of the Rock on whom rested responsibility for the lives of its defenders and the maintenance of England's flag there. His duty was to catch—and shoot—spies.

Shoot spies! The girl's heart contracted at the thought. No, no! She would not—she could not reveal to the governor the knowledge she had. That would be to send death to a