"Heaven knows how I've kept clear," he declared, "but there isn't a thing against me. I sailed close to the wind in Mexico. I'd have fought for them against America if they'd really meant business, but they didn't. I was too late for the Boer War or I'd have been in that for a certainty. I went through South America, but the little fighting I did there doesn't amount to anything. After I came back to the States I ran some close shaves, I admit, but I kept clear of the law. Then I got in with some Germans at Washington. They knew who I was, and they knew very well how I felt about England. I did a few things for them--nothing risky. They were keeping me for something big. That came along, as you know. They offered me the job of bringing these things to England, and I took it on." "For an amateur," Crawshay confessed, "you certainly did wonderfully. I am not a professional detective myself, but you fairly beat us on the sea, and you practically beat us on land as well." "There's nothing succeeds like simplicity," Denis declared. "I gambled upon it that no one would think of searching the curtains of the music hall box in which Gant and I spent apparently a jovial evening. No one did--until it was too late. Then I felt perfectly certain that both you and Brightman would believe I was trying to get hold of Richard Beverley. The poor fellow thought so himself for some time." "There is just one question," Crawshay said, after a moment's pause, "which I'd like to ask. It's about Nora Sharey." Sir Denis glanced at his companion with a faint smile. He suddenly realised the purport of his lingering. "Well, what about her?" "She seems to have followed you very quickly from New York." "Must you put it like that? Her father and brother were connected with the German Secret Service in New York, and on the declaration of war they had to hide. She could scarcely stay there alone." "She might have gone with her father to Chicago," Crawshay observed. "You must remember that she, too, is Irish," Sir Denis pointed out. "I am not at all sure that she wasn't a little homesick. By-the-by, are you interested in her?" "Since you ask me," Crawshay replied, "I am." Sir Denis threw away his cigarette. "I suppose," he said quietly, "if I tell you that I am delighted to hear it, for your own sake as well as hers--" "That's all I have been hanging about to hear," Crawshay interrupted, turning towards the castle. "I suppose we shall meet again in London?" "I think not. They talk about sending me to the Dublin Convention here. Until they want me, I don't think I shall move." Crawshay looked around him. The prospect in its way was beautiful, but save for a few bending figures in the distant fields, there was no sign of any human being. "You won't be able to stand this for long," he remarked. "You've lived too turbulent a life to vegetate here." Sir Denis laughed softly but with a new ring of real happiness.