"Ah, yes," nodded Tregar. "It is so I have heard." His glance lingered still upon Philip's face in subtle inquiry. Bending its Circean head, Temptation laughed lightly in Philip Poynter's eyes. The girl in the caravan was winding away by dusty roads--out of his life perhaps. And singular as the mission was, its aim was harmless.
"Our lady," said the Baron smoothly, "camps by night. From an aeroplane one may see much--a camp--a curl of smoke--a caravan. Later one may walk and, walking, one may lose his way--to find it again with perfect ease by means of a forest camp fire."
Somehow on the Baron's tongue the escapade became insidious duplicity. Philip flushed, acutely conscious of a significant stirring of his conscience.
"I may fly with Sherrill this afternoon," he said with marked reluctance.
"Permit me," said the Baron gratefully as he rose, "to thank you. The service is--ah--invaluable."
Uncomfortably Philip accepted his release and went lightly up the stairs.
"I am a fool," said Philip. "But surely Walt Whitman must have understood for he said it all in verse. 'I am to wait, I do not doubt, I am to meet you again,'" quoted Philip under his breath; "'I am to see to it that I do not lose you!'"
The door which led into the Baron's bedroom from his own was slightly ajar. Philip, about to close it, fancied he heard the stealthy rustle of paper beyond and swung it noiselessly back, halting in silent interest upon the threshold.
Themar, the Baron's Houdanian valet, was intently transcribing upon his shirt-cuff, the contents of a paper which lay uppermost in the drawer of a small portable desk.
Catlike, Philip stole across the room. The man's hand was laboriously reproducing upon the linen an intricate message in cipher.
"Difficult, too, isn't it?" sympathized Philip smoothly at his elbow.
With a sharp cry, Themar wheeled, his small, shifting eyes black with hate. They wavered and fell beneath the level, icy stare of the American. Philip's fingers slipped viselike along the other's wrists and Philip's voice grew more acidly polite.
"My dear Themar," he regretted, falling unconsciously into the language of his chief, "I must spoil the symmetry of your wardrobe. The hieroglyphical cuff, if you please."