“For the present at least to give no sign that you suspect anything. You are well enough posted now, my boy, to go straight ahead. Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves as sure as your name’s Grey and mine’s O’Hara. Assume the tone I told you of, and they’ll never suspect. They may be surprised, but they’ll be happy and they’ll be unwary. Never take the initiative yourself. Leave it all to Lindenwald.”
“But what will they make out of it?” Grey urged, curiously. “Surely you have formed some theory?”
“Yes, I have a theory,” O’Hara responded, “but it is probably just as well for me to keep it to myself for a while.”
“What do you think this talk about ‘thrones’ and ‘mad princes’ means?”
“That is for us to find out. And unless I am more of a fool than I think, it will very shortly develop. In the meantime you are anxious about the answers to your cables, aren’t you? Since they are addressed to Grey, you can’t accept them, that’s clear. But you shall know what is in them just the same. I’ll undertake that for you.”
“And the box with proofs that Schlippenbach spoke of? That is important.”
“To be sure. It is at the Gare du Nord in his name or yours, eh? I’ll get it for you. But the key?”
“There is a key in a wallet I found. Possibly that is it.”
And the thought of the wallet reminded him that a fifty-franc note and some change was all the money he had in his possession.
“I’m a little short of funds,” he said. “Do you happen to know how or where I have been in the habit of getting money when I needed it?”
“The whole thing is so absurd,” he explained, “as well as serious. Fancy your not knowing what you have done every few days since you landed! Johann has your letter of credit and gets you whatever you desire. All that is necessary is for you to sign your name.”
When O’Hara had gone Grey sat for a long time brooding over his extraordinary experience. His head was still aching, throbbingly, and his nerves were still a-tingle. Whatever treatment he had been subjected to its effects had not yet been entirely eliminated. He undressed, got into his pyjamas and went to bed; but sleep was coy and not to be won by wooing. He heard the clock strike two and three and four, and he saw the first gray sign of dawn between his curtains before he fell into a restless, troubled, unrefreshing slumber.