"You told her to go out and prove her innocence but in fact you're just trying to prove she's guilty by identifying her with a German espionage base in Madrid."

"You have no idea just how thin the ice is, nor how deep the water is below it—"

"Too bloody fancy, monsieur, I also think you lied about your own supposedly minor part in it. I think you're up to your filthy neck in all this, and I think I should probably kill you for it."

After that, he was ushered to the door and told to sleep it off. And thereafter a cable was sent to London.

She saw herself now as a figure in one of her own fantasies, a desperate woman with a mission. Yet as Gray would say, a scheme was not a mission, and the secret world, often indulgent of its own, was vicious to those it used.

She had become a rumor again by the time he reached Madrid. Although she had booked a suite in the Palace Hotel she had mainly been seen at the Ritz. A porter would remember her requesting a copy of the diplomatic yearbook, while a doorman would recall her asking directions to the German embassy—23 Calle Castellan. And an old friend and journalist would admit that she spent at least two hours on Friday afternoon questioning him about a certain Major von Kalle of the German legation.

It was the following Monday when Gray caught up with her again. The backdrop was typically Zelle: a cluttered suite at midnight, champagne in a bucket of lukewarm water, a mess of correspondence on the writing table. She looked lovely in white chiffon, her cheeks flushed from either an excess of rouge or a mild fever.

"You shouldn't have come," she told him. "You shouldn't have followed me."

He was exhausted. Perspiration had ruined his shirt, and too many cigarettes had given him a headache. "I spoke to your Martial Cazeaux," he said.

"Fine. Then you know what I'm doing here."

"I also did some checking on your Major von Kalle."

"Then you know why the French instructed me to meet him."

"For Godsakes, Margaretha, he's a German military attache."

"But that is the idea. By the way, did you know that he and Rudolph were in school together?"

"How nice for them. But not for you."

There were photographs on the desk, a stack of old publicity shots she must have been carrying for years. "When did you see him? Rudy's boyhood chum?"

"The major? Saturday."

"What did you tell him?"

She had picked up a feather boa, a prop from the make-believe that was her life. "I told him that I was an old friend of Rudy's and I wanted to talk to him about my arrest in London. That I wanted to find out who Clara Benedix is."

"And what did he say?"