"We can get it out of the safe easier than from Major Bishop's head," Woodhouse put in, with a smile.
"Right. We have a friend--in the governor's own house--a man with a number from the Wilhelmstrasse like you and me. At any moment in the last two months he could have laid a hand on that combination. But we thought it better to wait until necessity came. When the fleet arrives you will have that combination; you will go with it to Room D, and after that----"
"Yes--yes! Our country master of the sea at last, and by the work of the Wilhelmstrasse--despised spies who are shot like dogs when they're caught, but die heroes' deaths." The hotel proprietor checked himself in the midst of his rhapsody, and came back to more practical details:
"But this afternoon--that man from Alexandria who called you by name. That looked bad--very bad. He knows something?"
Woodhouse, who had been expecting the question, and who preferred not to share an anxiety he felt himself best fitted to cope with alone, turned the other's question aside:
"Never met him before in my life to my best recollection. My name he picked up on the _Princess Mary_, of course; I won a pool one day, and he may have heard some one mention it. Simply a drunken brawler who didn't know what he was doing."
Almer seemed satisfied, but raised another point:
"But the girl who has just left here; am I to have no explanation of her?"
"What explanation do you want?" the captain demanded curtly.
"She recognized you. Who is she? What is she?"
"Devilish unfortunate," Woodhouse admitted. "We met a few weeks ago on a train, while I was on my way to Egypt, you know. Chatted together--oh, very informally. She is a capable young woman from the States--a 'buyer' she calls herself. But I don't think we need fear complications from that score; she's bent only on getting home."
"The situation is dangerous," urged Almer, wagging his head. "She is stopping at the governor's house; any reference she might make about meeting you on a train on the Continent when you were supposed to be at Wady Halfa on the Nile----"
"I have her promise she will not mention that meeting to anybody."
"_Ach_! A woman's promise!" Almer's eyes invoked Heaven to witness a futile thing. "She seemed rather glad to see you again; I----"