now.
He shook his head. “No, not a German agent. We’ve heard through our networks that a drop is planned with a German agent for sometime next week. This was another traitor.”
“You said the dead man had divided loyalties. You think he decided not to turn the papers over to the Germans, after all, and another traitor killed him and took them to deliver to the Nazis?”
“It seems so.”
“Do you have any idea who it might be?”
He seemed to be considering, and I had the impression that he was not thinking over my question so much as how he wanted to answer it. At last, he said, “Yes, there are a few people it could possibly be. We’ll find our man.”
Something in his tone made me quite sure he would.
“What about the dead man?” I asked.
He looked at me. “What about him?”
As I had suspected, the man was no longer of any interest to him.
“Surely his death can’t remain a secret for long?”
“No, but it will be ruled a case of robbery. You know, better than I do, that there are a great many thieves on the loose in London at present.”
For some silly reason, the reminder smarted.
There wasn’t anything malicious in the comment; he simply stated it as fact. But it made me see myself in a way I had never really done before. Oh, I knew well enough what we were. There had never been any wool over my eyes about our profession. Uncle Mick had never tried to make it out as though we were a merry bunch of noble thieves.
But I didn’t like to be lumped in with violent criminals. And perhaps, I admitted, a part of me wanted to be something more.
“I feel a bit bad we left him lying there,” I said.
He looked up at me, as though he had never considered that particular aspect. “He’ll be discovered soon enough.”
“Yes, but it seems rather … cold somehow.”
“There are a lot of things we have to do that would probably seem cold to you, Miss McDonnell.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that grim statement, but I nodded.
The major moved to take the chair beside me, rather than the one behind his desk, and stretched out his long legs. I noticed suddenly that he looked tired. There were creases in the bronzed skin along his eyes that I had never noticed there before, and, in the lamplight, I could see the golden gleam of stubble beginning to rise on his jaw. He suddenly looked human, which was disconcerting in a way I couldn’t quite name.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him he should get some rest, but it certainly wasn’t my place. What was more, I knew he wasn’t likely to rest anytime soon, not until he got things sorted and he had decided what our next course of action was going to be.
Our next course of action. I was surprised by the thought. Did I mean to go on helping him? After all, I had done as he asked. By rights, Uncle Mick and I should be on our way home now. Somehow, however, things felt unfinished, as though there was some part I still needed to play.
“I take my tea black,” he said suddenly.
Of course, he did.
I poured him a cup of tea and then, before handing it over to him, stirred in a bit of sugar. “You could use some sweetness,” I said.
He took the cup from me without reply and took a sip of it. In addition to being sweet, it was scalding hot, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“You kept your cool tonight,” he said. “That was well done.”
I turned to look at him, shocked at the compliment. This mild approval, coming from the source it did, seemed high praise indeed.
“I was sick in the bushes,” I reminded him.
“Not until after. It’s in the moment that coolness is necessary, and you held up when it counted.”
“A cool head is a necessity in safecracking,” I told him. “We’ve had some close scrapes before.”
He nodded. “All the same, a lot of people would have gone to pieces upon discovering a body. If you’d have screamed, we might have been in trouble.”
“I’m not given to screaming at surprises,” I said.
“No. I don’t suppose you are.”
He took another sip of tea.
“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.
“That is something we’re going to have to consider,” he said. “I’ll speak with my superiors in the morning and see what course of action