Measures so extraordinary were generally held to indicate an incentive more extraordinary still.
"You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort of funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they come aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer voluptuousness. There's a reason."
"And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that reason to be?"
"Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British Intelligence Office are a long sight past finding out."
"It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the Assyrian is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares."
"Monsieur means?" the Swiss enquired.
"I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe some one of us a questionable character."
"German spy?"
"Possibly."
"Or an English traitor?"
"Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There is to-day no such thing in England. Two years ago the supposition might have been plausible. But that breed has long since been stamped out—in England."
"Another guess," Crane cut in: "they've taken considerable trouble to clear the track for us. Maybe it occurred to somebody at the last moment to make sure none of us was likely to pull off an inside job."
"'Inside job?'" Dressler pleaded.
