"Oh, don't yarn!" she interrupted. "I'm not squealing. You knew very well that I'd no need to take a post as telephone operator, and you did your duty when you got me turned off. It was very clever of you," she went on, "to tumble to me." Crawshay accepted the compliment with a smile. "If you will permit me to say so, Miss Sharey," he declared, "you are what we call in this country a good sportsman." "Oh, I can keep on the tracks all right," she assented. "I guess I am a little easier to deal with, for instance, than your friend Mr. Jocelyn Thew." Crawshay frowned. His expression became gloomier. "I am bound to confess, Miss Sharey," he sighed, "that your friend Mr. Jocelyn Thew has been the disappointment of my life." "Some brains, eh?" "He has brains, courage and luck," Crawshay pronounced. "Against these three things it is very hard work to bring off--shall I say a _coup_?" "The man who gets the better of Jocelyn Thew," she declared, with a little laugh, "deserves all the nuts. He is a sure winner every time. You're up against him now, aren't you?" "More or less," Crawshay confessed. "I crossed on the steamer with him." "I bet that didn't do you much good!" "I lost the first game," Crawshay confessed candidly. "I see that you know all about it." "No need to put me wiser than I am," the girl observed carelessly. "Jocelyn Thew's no talker." "Not unless it serves his purpose. It is astonishing," Crawshay went on reflectively, "how the science of detection has changed during the last ten years. When I was an apprentice at it--and though you may not think it. Miss Sharey, I am a professional, not an amateur, although I am generally employed on Government business--secrecy was our watchword. We hid in corners, we were stealthy, we always posed as being something we weren't. We should have denied emphatically having the slightest interest in the person under surveillance. In these days, however, everything is changed. We play the game with the cards upon the table--all except the last two or three, perhaps--and curiously enough, I am not at all sure that it doesn't add finesse to the game." Her eyes flashed appreciatively. "You're dead right," she acknowledged. "Take us two, for instance. You know very well that Jocelyn Thew is a pal of mine. You know very well that I shall see him within the next twenty-four hours. You know very well that you're out to hunt him to the death, and you know that I know it. Every question you ask me has a purpose, yet we talk here just as chance acquaintances might--I, a girl whom you rather like the look of--you do like the look of me, don't you, Mr. Crawshay?" Crawshay had no need to be subtle. His eyes and tone betrayed his admiration. "I have thoroughly disliked you ever since you were too clever for me in New York," he confessed, "and I have been in love with you all the time."