Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/308

 "Oh, I know I'm going to hear something very exciting," Mrs. Sherman chortled. "Kitty, you'd better hush up Willy Kimball for a while and come over here. You can improve your mind better listening to the general."

Crandall soon was the center of a group. He began, with sober directness.

"Well, in the matter of spies in war time, Mrs. Sherman, one is struck by the fact of their resemblance to the plague—you never can tell when they're going to get you or whence they came. Now here on the Rock I have reason to believe we have one or more spies busy this minute."

Jane Gerson, sitting where the light smote her face, drew back into the shadow with a swift movement of protectiveness. Woodhouse, who balanced a dainty Satsuma coffee cup on his knee, kept his eyes on his superior's face with a mildly interested air.

"In fact," Crandall continued evenly, "I shouldn't be surprised if one—possibly two spies—should be arrested before the night is over. And the point about this that will interest you ladies is that one of these—the one whose order for arrest I have already