ome
ways. He kept me off the stage--and tried to keep me off everything else
worth doing for five years. Then I left him, for my health and looks had
come back, and I got a fair part in a play on tour. There I met a
countryman of mine--oh! don't be encouraged to hope! I never gave Roger
any cause to divorce me; and if I had, I'd have done it so he couldn't
prove a thing!"

"When you say the man was your countryman, I suppose you mean a German,"
I said.

"Well, yes," she replied, with the flaunting frankness she affected in
these revelations. "German-American he was. I'm German by birth, and
grew up in America. I've been back often and long since then. But this
man had a scheme. He wanted me to go into it with him. I didn't see my
way at first though there was big money, so he left the show before the
accident. When I found myself alive and kicking among the dead that day,
however, I saw my chance. I left a ring and a few things to identify me
with a woman who was killed, and I lit out. It was in the dead of night,
so luck was on my side for once. I wrote my friend, and it wasn't long
before I was at work with him for the German Government. The Abbey
affair was after he'd got out of England and into Germany through
Switzerland. He was a sailor, and had been given command of a big new
submarine. If it hadn't been for the row you and your pal kicked up,
we--he on the water and I on land--might have brought off one of the big
stunts of the war. You tore it--after I'd been mewed up in the old
rat-warren for a week, and everything was working just right! I wish to
goodness the whole house had burned, and I did wish _you'd_ burned with
it. But I don't know if to-night isn't going to pay me--and you--just as
well. There's a lot owing from you to me. I haven't told you all yet. My
friend's submarine was caught, and he went down with her. I blame that
to you. If I hadn't failed him with the signals, he might be alive now."

"I was more patriotic than I knew!" I flung back. "As you're so
confidential, tell me how you got into the Abbey, and where you hid."

She shook her dyed and tousled head. "That's where I draw the line," she
said. "I've told you what I have told to please myself, not you. You
can't profit by a word of it. That's where my fun comes in! If I split
about the Abbey, you might profit somehow--or your friend the Courtenaye
girl would. I want to punish her, too."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Perhaps in that case y