"Mr. Prince!" exclaimed Sahwah in wrath. "What"s _he_ got to do with it?"
"Well, it seems that all along he"s been suspicious of her; he didn"t think she was sincere when she talked about liking America better than her own country," replied Agony. "He says he isn"t surprised at all that this happened; he"s been expecting something of the kind. It was he that told papa and the Secret Service man about her having known the prince."
"How did _he_ find it out?" demanded Sahwah.
"I don"t know, I never told him," declared Agony, bristling as though she thought Sahwah suspected she had told.
"I hate that artist!" Sahwah declared fiercely. "He"s a meddlesome old thing!"
"Well, you can"t really blame him for suspecting Veronica," said Agony, lightly, "You see, she"s an alien enemy, and----"
"Agony!" cried Sahwah savagely, "do _you_ believe Veronica"s a traitor?"
"I hate to think----" began Agony.
Sahwah came close to her and faced her with blazing eyes. "Do you believe she is?"
"It"s hard to believe----"
"_Do you believe she"s a traitor_?"
Agony shrank back from her fury. "No, I don"t," she said meekly. "Don"t be so savage, Sahwah."
Sahwah subsided.
"Where is Veronica?" she asked.
"She"s still over at our house. The Secret Service man sent me over here to bring all you girls over, he wants to talk to you."
Sahwah roused the girls from bed with her sensational piece of news and they all hastened home with Agony. Mr. Wing took them upstairs to his study and they went in, feeling queer and frightened. Veronica was sitting there, her face as white as a sheet, her great eyes dilated with fear and bewilderment. The artist lounged in the window seat, watching Veronica closely and smiling slightly to himself, and facing Veronica sat a small, keen-looking man with little, steely gray eyes that bored like gimlets.
"These are the girls with whom Miss Lehar is staying," said Mr. Wing. He introduced the little man as Special Agent Sanders.
Sahwah searched Mr. Wing"s face pleadingly; he looked greatly puzzled, and very, very much disturbed. Then she looked at the gimlet-eyed man in the chair and saw his eyes rove from one to another of the girls questioningly. He began to speak without preliminary.
"When you girls reached home after this party last night was Miss Lehar there?"
"Yes," answered Migwan and Hinpoha and Gladys together. Sahwah was silent.
Immediately Agent Sanders" eye was upon her. "Was she?" he asked directly of Sahwah.
Sahwah opened her lips and closed them nervously, unable to frame an untruth, and equally unable to tell what she knew. She looked helplessly at Veronica. The room became very still. The others looked at her in astonishment. Agent Sanders bored her with his little, keen eyes. Sahwah felt herself turning red and white and her heartbeats thumped against her eardrums. She sent Veronica another miserable look. Veronica returned the look steadily, and then she spoke.
"Tell him you saw me coming in the back door after you got home," she said calmly.
"Is that true?" Agent Sanders asked of Sahwah.
Sahwah nodded. A gasp of astonishment went up from the other three Winnebagos.
"Tell all the circ.u.mstances connected with the incident," Agent Sanders directed Sahwah.
"There weren"t any circ.u.mstances connected with it," replied Sahwah earnestly. "We had just come home and our friend had had bad news and was going away early in the morning and we were getting her ready and I went out in the back entry way to get something and just then Veronica came in the back door."
"You thought she had gone home with a sick headache and was in bed?"
"Yes," replied Sahwah, "but when she came in I decided she had been out for a walk." This sounded like a perfectly natural explanation to Sahwah.
"Didn"t it strike you strange that she should have gone walking at that hour?"
"No, it didn"t," replied Sahwah eagerly. "She often does it."
"Ah-h!" Agent Sanders merely breathed the syllable, yet it held a world of meaning. Sahwah felt vaguely apprehensive.
"So she often goes out walking at midnight, does she?" continued the agent. Sahwah felt that she had made a misstep somewhere, and was harming Veronica"s cause instead of helping it, but the eyes of the agent seemed to be drawing all her knowledge from her like a magnet picking up needles.
"I meant," said Sahwah, "that she often has those sick headaches, and when she does she generally goes out walking to cure them."
"And these headaches generally occur at night?"
"Yes."
"In other words," said Agent Sanders as confidently as if he could see right inside of her head and knew everything in it, "this is not the first time Miss Lehar has gone on a mysterious errand at night--eh?"
Sahwah started, and then was furious at herself because she knew the agent had noticed it.
He bored his eyes right through her, and remarked sarcastically, "You knew this girl to be an alien, an enemy of your country; you knew she was going off on mysterious errands, and yet you didn"t think there was anything strange about it!"
Then to Sahwah"s relief Agent Sanders fell to making rapid notes in a memorandum book, and ceased addressing her. He turned abruptly to Veronica.
"Where did you go when you left this house last night?" he asked pointblank.
"Down the street to Carver House, through the yard, down the hill behind it, along the road to the edge of town and back," replied Veronica readily.
The agent looked thoughtful for a moment. The straightforwardness of her reply seemed to perplex him a little.
Then he asked, "Whom did you meet down there at the edge of town?"
Veronica did not answer.
"Whom did you meet?" he repeated triumphantly.
Veronica opened her lips as if to speak and then closed them again and remained silent. The room was so still that the heavy ticking of the clock sounded like hammer blows on an anvil. All eyes were on Veronica; the Winnebagos stared, open-mouthed; Sahwah"s blood ran cold in her veins; Agent Sanders leaned forward, the whole force of his personality concentrated in his compelling eyes.
"I didn"t meet anybody," said Veronica, returning his gaze steadfastly.
"Where did you go, then?"
Veronica was silent.