. "I shall feel safer when I have told
everything."

"As you please," said the lawyer.

He sat down in one of the big arm-chairs facing the couch. In a low
voice Jane began her story.

"I came over on the Lusitania to take up a post in Paris. I was
fearfully keen about the war, and just dying to help somehow or other. I
had been studying French, and my teacher said they were wanting help in
a hospital in Paris, so I wrote and offered my services, and they were
accepted. I hadn't got any folk of my own, so it made it easy to arrange
things.

"When the Lusitania was torpedoed, a man came up to me. I'd noticed him
more than once--and I'd figured it out in my own mind that he was afraid
of somebody or something. He asked me if I was a patriotic American,
and told me he was carrying papers which were just life or death to
the Allies. He asked me to take charge of them. I was to watch for an
advertisement in the Times. If it didn't appear, I was to take them to
the American Ambassador.

"Most of what followed seems like a nightmare still. I see it in my
dreams sometimes.... I'll hurry over that part. Mr. Danvers had told me
to watch out. He might have been shadowed from New York, but he didn't
think so. At first I had no suspicions, but on the boat to Holyhead I
began to get uneasy. There was one woman who had been very keen to look
after me, and chum up with me generally--a Mrs. Vandemeyer. At first I'd
been only grateful to her for being so kind to me; but all the time I
felt there was something about her I didn't like, and on the Irish
boat I saw her talking to some queer-looking men, and from the way they
looked I saw that they were talking about me. I remembered that she'd
been quite near me on the Lusitania when Mr. Danvers gave me the packet,
and before that she'd tried to talk to him once or twice. I began to get
scared, but I didn't quite see what to do.

"I had a wild idea of stopping at Holyhead, and not going on to London
that day, but I soon saw that that would be plumb foolishness. The only
thing was to act as though I'd noticed nothing, and hope for the best.
I couldn't see how they could get me if I was on my guard. One thing
I'd done already as a precaution--ripped open the oilskin packet and
substituted blank paper, and then sewn it up again. So, if anyone did
manage to rob me of it, it wouldn't matter.

"What to do with the real thing worried me no end. Finally I opened it
out flat--there were only