The Secret Adversary

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saw him pass anything to her, but he might have done so. It seems to me
quite likely that he entrusted the papers to this girl, believing that
she, as a woman, had a greater chance of bringing them safely to shore.

"But if so, where was the girl, and what had she done with the papers?
By later advice from America it seemed likely that Danvers had been
closely shadowed on the way over. Was this girl in league with his
enemies? Or had she, in her turn, been shadowed and either tricked or
forced into handing over the precious packet?

"We set to work to trace her out. It proved unexpectedly difficult.
Her name was Jane Finn, and it duly appeared among the list of the
survivors, but the girl herself seemed to have vanished completely.
Inquiries into her antecedents did little to help us. She was an orphan,
and had been what we should call over here a pupil teacher in a small
school out West. Her passport had been made out for Paris, where she
was going to join the staff of a hospital. She had offered her services