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The Lost Naval Papers

by Bennet Copplestone · English · Gutenberg #10474 · 449,862 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lost Naval Papers

Author: Bennet Copplestone


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #10474]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10474

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Christine Gehring and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS ***

THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS

By

BENNET COPPLESTONE




1917




CONTENTS


PART I


_WILLIAM DAWSON_


CHAPTER

I A STORY AND A VISIT

II AT CLOSE QUARTERS

III AN INQUISITION

IV SABOTAGE

V BAFFLED

VI GUESSWORK

VII THE MARINE SENTRY

VIII TREHAYNE'S LETTER


PART II


_MADAME GILBERT_


IX THE WOMAN AND THE MAN

X A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP

XI AT BRIGHTON


PART III


_ SEE IS TO BELIEVE_


XII DAWSON PRESCRIBES

XIII THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN

XIV A COFFIN AND AN OWL


PART IV


_THE CAPTAIN OF MARINES_


XV DAWSON REAPPEARS

XVI DAWSON STRIKES

XVII DAWSON TELEPHONES FOR A SURGEON





PART I


_WILLIAM DAWSON_




CHAPTER I


A STORY AND A VISIT

At the beginning of the month of September, 1916, there appeared in
the _Cornhill Magazine_ a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I
had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred
within my personal experience. One of the principals--to whom I had
allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary--was an intimate friend,
but I had never met the Scotland Yard officer whom I called William
Dawson, and was not at all anxious to make his official acquaintance.
To me he then seemed an inhuman, icy-blooded "sleuth," a being of
great national importance, but repulsive and dangerous as an
associate. Yet by a turn of Fortune's wheel I came not only to know
William Dawson, but to work with him, and almost to like him. His
penetrative efficiency compelled one's admiration, and his unconcealed
vanity showed that he did not stand wholly outside the human family.
Yet I never felt safe with Dawson. In his presence, and when I knew
that somewhere round the corner he was carrying on his mysterious
investigations, I was perpetually apprehensive of his hand upon my
shoulder and his bracelets upon my wrists. I was unconscious of crime,
but the Defence of the Realm Regulations--which are to Dawson a new
fount of wisdom and power--create so many fresh offences every week
that it is difficult for the most timidly loyal of citizens to keep
his innocency up to date. I have doubtless trespassed many times, for
I have Dawson's assurance that my present freedom is due solely to his
reprehensible softness towards me. Whenever I have showed independence
of spirit--of which, God knows, I have little in these days--Dawson
would pull out his terrible red volumes of ever-expanding Regulations
and make notes of my committed crimes. The Act itself could be printed
on a sheet of notepaper, but it has given birth to a whole library of
Regulations. Thus he bent me to his will as he had my poor friend
Richard Cary.

The mills of Scotland Yard grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding
small. There is nothing showy about them. They work by system, not by
inspiration. Though Dawson was not specially intelligent--in some
respects almost stupid--he was dreadfully, terrifyingly efficient,
because he was part of the slowly grinding Scotland Yard machine.

As this book properly begins with my published story of "The Lost
Naval Papers," I will reprint it here exactly as it was written for
the readers of the _Cornhill Magazine_ in September, 1916.

       *       *       *       *       *


I. BAITING THE TRAP

This story--which contains a moral for those fearful folk who exalt
everything German--was told to me by Richard Cary, the accomplished
naval correspondent of a big paper in the North of England. I have
known him and his enthusiasm for the White Ensign for twenty years. He
springs from an old naval stock, the Carys of North Devon, and has
devoted his life to the study of the Sea Service. He had for so long
been accustomed to move freely among shipyards and navy men, and was
trusted so completely, that the veil of secrecy which dropped in
August 1914 between the Fleets and the world scarcely existed for him.
Everything which he desired to know for the better understanding of
the real work of the Navy came to him officially or unofficially.
When, therefore, he states that the Naval Notes with which this story
deals would have been of incalculable value to the enemy, I accept his
word without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them, and they
made me tremble--for Cary's neck. I pressed him to write this story
himself, but he refused. "No," said he, "I have told you the yarn just
as it happened; write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at
handling hard facts and making scientific deductions from them, but
with no eye for the picturesque details. I give it to you." He rose to
go--Cary had been lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my
front doorstep. "If you insist upon it," added he, smiling, "I don't
mind sharing in the plunder."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one
morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established his
headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes,
diagrams, and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the
apparent chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy's Work
which he proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not
designed to be an exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but it
would be full of fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear
analysis. Day by day for more than twenty months he had been
collecting details of every phase of the Navy's operations, here a
little and there a little. He had recently returned from a
confidential tour of the shipyards and naval bases, and had exercised
his trained eye upon checking and amplifying what he had previously
learned. While his recollection of this tour was fresh he was actively
writing up his Notes and revising the rough early draft of his book.
More than once it had occurred to him that his accumulations of Notes
were dangerous explosives to store in a private house. They were
becoming so full and so accurate that the enemy would have paid any
sum or have committed any crime to secure possession of them. Cary is
not nervous or imaginative--have I not said that he springs from a
naval stock?--but even he now and then felt anxious. He would, I
believe, have slept peacefully though knowing that a delicately primed
bomb lay beneath his bed, for personal risks troubled him little, but
the thought that hurt to his country might come from his well-meant
labours sometimes rapped against his nerves. A few days before his
patriotic conscience had been stabbed by no less a personage than
Admiral Jellicoe, who, speaking to a group of naval students which
included Cary, had said: "We have concealed nothing from you, for we
trust absolutely to your discretion. Remember what you have seen, but
do not make any notes." Yet here at this moment was Cary disregarding
the orders of a Commander-in-Chief whom he worshipped. He tried to
square his conscience by reflecting that no more than three people
knew of the existence of his Notes or of the book which he was writing
from them, and that each one of those three was as trustworthy as
himself. So he went on collating, comparing, writing, and the heap
upon his table grew bigger under his hands.

The clock had just struck twelve upon that morning when a servant
entered and said, "A gentleman to see you, sir, upon important
business. His name is Mr. Dawson."

Cary jumped up and went to his dining-room, where the visitor was
waiting. The name had meant nothing to him, but the instant his eyes
fell upon Mr. Dawson he remembered that he was the chief Scotland Yard
officer who had come north to teach the local police how to keep track
of the German agents who infested the shipbuilding centres. Cary had
met Dawson more than once, and had assisted him with his intimate
local knowledge. He greeted his visitor with smiling courtesy, but
Dawson did not smile. His first words, indeed, came like shots from an
automatic pistol.

"Mr. Cary," said he, "I want to see your Naval Notes."

Cary was staggered, for the three people whom I have mentioned did not
include Mr. Dawson. "Certainly," said he, "I will show them to you if
you ask officially. But how in the world did you hear anything about
them?"

"I am afraid that a good many people know about them, most undesirable
people too. If you will show them to me--I am asking officially--I
will tell you what I know."

Cary led the way to his study. Dawson glanced round the room, at the
papers heaped upon the table, at the tall windows bare of
curtains--Cary, who loved light and sunshine, hated curtains--and
growled. Then he locked the door, pulled down the thick blue blinds
required by the East Coast lighting orders, and switched on the
electric lights though it was high noon in May. "That's better," said
he. "You are an absolutely trustworthy man, Mr. Cary. I know all about
you. But you are damned careless. That bare window is overlooked from
half a dozen flats. You might as well do your work in the street."

Dawson picked up some of the papers, and their purport was explained
to him by Cary. "I don't know anything of naval details," said he,
"but I don't need any evidence of the value of the stuff here. The
enemy wants it, wants it badly; that is good enough for me."

"But," remonstrated Cary, "no one knows of these papers, or of the use
to which I am putting them, except my son in the Navy, my wife (who
has not read a line of them), and my publisher in London."

"Hum!" commented Dawson. "Then how do you account for this?"

He opened his leather despatch-case and drew forth a parcel carefully
wrapped up in brown paper. Within the wrapping was a large white
envelope of the linen woven paper used for registered letters, and
generously sealed. To Cary's surprise, for the envelope appeared to be
secure, Dawson cautiously opened it so as not to break the seal which
was adhering to the flap and drew out a second smaller envelope, also
sealed. This he opened in the same delicate way and took out a third;
from the third he drew a fourth, and so on until eleven empty
envelopes had been added to the litter piled upon Cary's table, and
the twelfth, a small one, remained in Dawson's hands.

"Did you ever see anything so childish?" observed he, indicating the
envelopes. "A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just
crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one
even if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to--well,
someone in whom we are deeply interested, though he does not know it."

Cary, who had been fascinated by the succession of sealed envelopes,
stretched out his hand towards one of them. "Don't touch," snapped out
Dawson. "Your clumsy hands would break the seals, and then there would
be the devil to pay. Of course all these envelopes were first opened
in my office. It takes a dozen years to train men to open sealed
envelopes so that neither flap nor seal is broken, and both can be
again secured without showing a sign of disturbance. It is a trade
secret."

Dawson's expert fingers then opened the twelfth envelope, and he
produced a letter. "Now, Mr. Cary, if we had not known you and also
known that you were absolutely honest and loyal--though dangerously
simple-minded and careless in the matter of windows--this letter would
have been very awkward indeed for you. It runs: 'Hagan arrives 10.30
p.m. Wednesday to get Cary's Naval Notes. Meet him. Urgent.' Had we
not known you, Mr. Richard Cary might have been asked to explain how
Hagan knew all about his Naval Notes and was so very confident of
being able to get them."

Cary smiled. "I have often felt," said he, "especially in war-time,
that it was most useful to be well known to the police. You may ask me
anything you like, and I will do my best to answer. I confess that I
am aghast at the searchlight of inquiry which has suddenly been turned
upon my humble labours. My son at sea knows nothing of the Notes
except what I have told him in my letters, my wife has not read a line
of them, and my publisher is the last man to talk. I seem to have
suddenly dropped into the middle of a detective story." The poor man
scratched his head and smiled ruefully at the Scotland Yard officer.

"Mr. Cary," said Dawson, "those windows of yours would account for
anything. You have been watched for a long time, and I am perfectly
sure that our friend Hagan and his associates here know precisely in
what drawer of that desk you keep your Naval Papers. Your flat is easy
to enter--I had a look round before coming in to-day--and on Wednesday
night (that is to-morrow) there will be a scientific burglary here and
your Notes will be stolen."

"Oh no they won't," cried Cary. "I will take them down this afternoon
to my office and lock them up in the big safe. It will put me to a lot
of bother, for I shall also have to lock up there the chapters of my
book."

"You newspaper men ought all to be locked up yourselves. You are a
cursed nuisance to honest, hard-worked Scotland Yard men like me. But
you mistake the object of my visit. I want this flat to be entered
to-morrow night, and I want your Naval Papers to be stolen."

For a moment the wild thought came to Cary that this man Dawson--the
chosen of the Yard--was himself a German Secret Service agent, and
must have shown in his eyes some signs of the suspicion, for Dawson
laughed loudly. "No, Mr. Cary, I am not in the Kaiser's pay, nor are
you, though the case against you might be painted pretty black. This
man Hagan is on our string in London, and we want him very badly
indeed. Not to arrest--at least not just yet--but to keep running
round showing us his pals and all their little games. He is an
Irish-American, a very unbenevolent neutral, to whom we want to give a
nice, easy, happy time, so that he can mix himself up thoroughly with
the spy business and wrap a rope many times round his neck. We will
pull on to the end when we have finished with him, but not a minute
too soon. He is too precious to be frightened. Did you ever come
across such an ass"--Dawson contemptuously indicated the pile of
sealed envelopes; "he must have soaked himself in American dime novels
and cinema crime films. He will be of more use to us than a dozen of
our best officers. I feel that I love Hagan, and won't have him
disturbed. When he comes here to-morrow night, he shall be seen, but
not heard. He shall enter this room, lift your Notes, which shall be
in their usual drawer, and shall take them safely away. After that I
rather fancy that we shall enjoy ourselves, and that the salt will
stick very firmly upon Hagan's little tail."

Cary did not at all like this plan; it might offer amusement and
instruction to the police, but seemed to involve himself in an
excessive amount of responsibility. "Will it not be far too risky to
let him take my Notes even if you do shadow him closely afterwards? He
will get them copied and scattered amongst a score of agents, one of
whom may get the information through to Germany. You know your job, of
course, but the risk seems too big for me. After all, they are my
Notes, and I would far sooner burn them now than that the Germans
should see a line of them."

Dawson laughed again. "You are a dear, simple soul, Mr. Cary; it does
one good to meet you. Why on earth do you suppose I came here to-day
if it were not to enlist your help? Hagan is going to take all the
risks; you and I are not looking for any. He is going to steal some
Naval Notes, but they will not be those which lie on this table. I
myself will take charge of those and of the chapters of your most
reprehensible book. You shall prepare, right now, a beautiful new
artistic set of notes calculated to deceive. They must be accurate
where any errors would be spotted, but wickedly false wherever
deception would be good for Fritz's health. I want you to get down to
a real plant. This letter shall be sealed up again in its twelve silly
envelopes and go by registered post to Hagan's correspondent. You
shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which we
want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten as
you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to
tempt him out of harbour. Don't overdo it, but mix up your fiction
with enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If
you do your work well--and the Naval authorities here seem to think a
lot of you--Hagan will believe in your Notes, and will try to get them
to his German friends at any cost or risk, which will be exactly what
we want of him. Then, when he has served our purpose, he will find
that we--have--no--more--use--for--him."

Dawson accompanied this slow, harmlessly sounding sentence with a grim
and nasty smile. Cary, before whose eyes flashed for a moment the
vision of a chill dawn, cold grey walls, and a silent firing party,
shuddered. It was a dirty task to lay so subtle a trap even for a
dirty Irish-American spy. His honest English soul revolted at the call
upon his brains and knowledge, but common sense told him that in this
way, Dawson's way, he could do his country a very real service. For a
few minutes he mused over the task set to his hand, and then spoke.

"All right. I think that I can put up exactly what you want. The faked
Notes shall be ready when you come to-morrow. I will give the whole
day to them."

In the morning the new set of Naval Papers was ready, and their
purport was explained in detail to Dawson, who chuckled joyously.
"This is exactly what Admiral ---- wants, and it shall get through to
Germany by Fritz's own channels. I have misjudged you, Mr. Cary; I
thought you little better than a fool, but that story here of a
collision in a fog and the list of damaged Queen Elizabeths in dock
would have taken in even me. Fritz will suck it down like cream. I
like that effort even better than your grave comments on damaged
turbines and worn-out gun tubes. You are a genius, Mr. Cary, and I
must take you to lunch with the Admiral this very day. You can explain
the plant better than I can, and he is dying to hear all about it. Oh,
by the way, he particularly wants a description of the failure to
complete the latest batch of big shell fuses, and the shortage of
lyddite. You might get that done before the evening. Now for the
burglary. Do nothing, nothing at all, outside your usual routine. Come
home at your usual hour, go to bed as usual, and sleep soundly if you
can. Should you hear any noise in the night, put your head under the
bedclothes. Say nothing to Mrs. Cary unless you are obliged, and for
God's sake don't let any woman--wife, daughter, or maid-servant
--disturb my pearl of a burglar while he is at work. He must have
a clear run, with everything exactly as he expects to find it.
Can I depend upon you?"

"I don't pretend to like the business," said Cary, "but you can depend
upon me to the letter of my orders."

"Good," cried Dawson. "That is all I want."


II. THE TRAP CLOSES

Cary heard no noise, though he lay awake for most of the night,
listening intently. The flat seemed to be more quiet even than usual.
There was little traffic in the street below, and hardly a step broke
the long silence of the night. Early in the morning--at six
B.S.T.--Cary slipped out of bed, stole down to his study, and pulled
open the deep drawer in which he had placed the bundle of faked Naval
Notes. They had gone! So the Spy-Burglar had come, and, carefully
shepherded by Dawson's sleuth-hounds, had found the primrose path easy
for his crime. To Cary, the simple, honest gentleman, the whole plot
seemed to be utterly revolting--justified, of course, by the country's
needs in time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing of
glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of
excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of
spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives
him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman--to whom a
salmon is a people's food--nets him coldly and expeditiously as he
comes in from the sea.

Shortly after breakfast there came a call from Dawson on the
telephone. "All goes well. Come to my office as soon as possible."
Cary found Dawson bubbling with professional satisfaction. "It was
beautiful," cried he. "Hagan was met at the train, taken to a place we
know of, and shadowed by us tight as wax. We now know all his
associates--the swine have not even the excuse of being German. He
burgled your flat himself while one of his gang watched outside. Never
mind where I was; you would be surprised if I told you; but I saw
everything. He has the faked papers, is busy making copies, and this
afternoon is going down the river in a steamer to get a glimpse of the
shipyards and docks and check your Notes as far as can be done. Will
they stand all right?"

"Quite all right," said Cary. "The obvious things were given
correctly."

"Good. We will be in the steamer."

Cary went that afternoon, quite unchanged in appearance by Dawson's
order. "If you try to disguise yourself," declared that expert, "you
will be spotted at once. Leave the refinements to us." Dawson himself
went as an elderly dug-out officer with the rank marks of a colonel,
and never spoke a word to Cary upon the whole trip down and up the
teeming river. Dawson's men were scattered here and there--one a
passenger of inquiring mind, another a deckhand, yet a third--a pretty
girl in khaki--sold tea and cakes in the vessel's saloon. Hagan--who,
Cary heard afterwards, wore the brass-bound cap and blue kit of a mate
in the American merchant service--was never out of sight for an
instant of Dawson or of one of his troupe. He busied himself with a
strong pair of marine glasses, and now and then asked innocent
questions of the ship's deckhands. He had evidently himself once
served as a sailor. One deckhand, an idle fellow to whom Hagan was
very civil, told his questioner quite a lot of interesting details
about the Navy ships, great and small, which could be seen upon the
building slips. All these details tallied strangely with those
recorded in Cary's Notes. The trip up and down the river was a great
success for Hagan and for Dawson, but for Cary it was rather a bore.
He felt somehow out of the picture. In the evening Dawson called at
Cary's office and broke in upon him. "We had a splendid trip to-day,"
said he. "It exceeded my utmost hopes. Hagan thinks no end of your
Notes, but he is not taking any risks. He leaves in the morning for
Glasgow to do the Clyde and to check some more of your stuff. Would
you like to come?" Cary remarked that he was rather busy, and that
these river excursions, though doubtless great fun for Dawson, were
rather poor sport for himself. Dawson laughed joyously--he was a
cheerful soul when he had a spy upon his string. "Come along," said
he. "See the thing through. I should like you to be in at the death."
Cary observed that he had no stomach for cold, damp dawns and firing
parties.

"I did not quite mean that," replied Dawson. "Those closing ceremonies
are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through to a
finish. You are a newspaper man, and should be eager for new
experiences."

"I will come," said Cary, rather reluctantly. "But I warn you that my
sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not
look to have a dog's chance against you."

"He hasn't," said Dawson, with great satisfaction.

Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near
his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first.
But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared
as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in
the naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance
can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but Hagan
seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching through
his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers or
passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be communicative;
he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw with surface
rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which would have
surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not, however, have
surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had been conceived.
This second trip, like the first, was declared by Dawson to have been
a great success. "Did you know me?" he asked. "I was a clean-shaven
naval doctor, about as unlike the army colonel of the first trip as a
pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London to-night by the
North-Western. There are two copies of your Notes. One is going by
Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the Midland. Hagan has
the original masterpiece. I will look after him and leave the two
other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard by 'phone, and
have arranged that all three shall have passports for Holland. The two
copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really must have
Hagan's set of Notes for my Museum."

"And what will become of Hagan?" asked Cary.

"Come and see," said Mr. Dawson.

Dawson entertained Cary at dinner in a private room at the Station
Hotel, waited upon by one of his own confidential men. "Nobody ever
sees me," he observed, with much satisfaction, "though I am
everywhere." (I suspect that Dawson is not without his little
vanities.) "Except in my office and with people whom I know well, I
am always some one else. The first time I came to your house I wore a
beard, and the second time looked like a gas inspector. You saw only
the real Dawson. When one has got the passion for the chase in one's
blood, one cannot bide for long in a stuffy office. As I have a jewel
of an assistant, I can always escape and follow up my own victims.
This man Hagan is a black heartless devil. Don't waste your sympathy
on him, Mr. Cary. He took money from us quite lately to betray the
silly asses of Sinn Feiners, and now, thinking us hoodwinked, is after
more money from the Kaiser. He is of the type that would sell his own
mother and buy a mistress with the money. He's not worth your pity. We
use him and his like for just so long as they can be useful, and then
the jaws of the trap close. By letting him take those faked Notes we
have done a fine stroke for the Navy, for the Yard, and for Bill
Dawson. We have got into close touch with four new German agents here
and two more down south. We shan't seize them yet; just keep them
hanging on and use them. That's the game. I am never anxious about an
agent when I know him and can keep him watched. Anxious, bless you; I
love him like a cat loves a mouse. I've had some spies on my string
ever since the war began; I wouldn't have them touched or worried for
the world. Their correspondence tells me everything, and if a letter
to Holland which they haven't written slips in sometimes, it's useful,
very useful, as useful almost as your faked Notes."

Half an hour before the night train was due to leave for the South,
Dawson, very simply but effectively changed in appearance--for Hagan
knew by sight the real Dawson--led Cary to the middle sleeping-coach
on the train. "I have had Hagan put in No. 5," he said, "and you and I
will take Nos. 4 and 6. No. 5 is an observation berth; there is one
fixed up for us on this sleeping-coach. Come in here." He pulled Cary
into No. 4, shut the door, and pointed to a small wooden knob set a
few inches below the luggage rack. "If one unscrews that knob one can
see into the next berth, No. 5. No. 6 is fitted in the same way, so
that we can rake No. 5 from both sides. But, mind you, on no account
touch those knobs until the train is moving fast and until you have
switched out the lights. If No. 5 was dark when you opened the
peep-hole, a ray of light from your side would give the show away. And
unless there was a good deal of vibration and rattle in the train you
might be heard. Now cut away to No. 6, fasten the door, and go to bed.
I shall sit up and watch, but there is nothing for you to do."

Hagan appeared in due course, was shown into No. 5 berth, and the
train started. Cary asked himself whether he should go to bed as
advised or sit up reading. He decided to obey Dawson's orders, but to
take a look in upon Hagan before settling down for the journey. He
switched off his lights, climbed upon the bed, and carefully unscrewed
the little knob which was like the one shown to him by Dawson. A beam
of light stabbed the darkness of his berth, and putting his eye with
some difficulty to the hole--one's nose gets so confoundedly in the
way--he saw Hagan comfortably arranging himself for the night. The spy
had no suspicion of his watchers on both sides, for, after settling
himself in bed, he unwrapped a flat parcel and took out a bundle of
blue papers, which Cary at once recognised as the originals of his
stolen Notes. Hagan went through them--he had put his suit-case across
his knees to form a desk--and carefully made marginal jottings. Cary,
who had often tried to write in trains, could not but admire the man's
laborious patience. He painted his letters and figures over and over
again, in order to secure distinctness, in spite of the swaying of the
train, and frequently stopped to suck the point of his pencil.

"I suppose," thought Cary, "that Dawson yonder is just gloating over
his prey, but for my part I feel an utterly contemptible beast. Never
again will I set a trap for even the worst of my fellow-creatures." He
put back the knob, went to bed, and passed half the night in extreme
mental discomfort and the other half in snatching brief intervals of
sleep. It was not a pleasant journey.

Dawson did not come out of his berth at Euston until after Hagan had
left the station in a taxi-cab, much to Cary's surprise, and then was
quite ready, even anxious, to remain for breakfast at the hotel. He
explained his strange conduct. "Two of my men," said he, as he
wallowed in tea and fried soles--one cannot get Dover soles in the
weary North--"who travelled in ordinary compartments, are after Hagan
in two taxis, so that if one is delayed, the other will keep touch.
Hagan's driver also has had a police warning, so that our spy is in a
barbed-wire net. I shall hear before very long all about him."

Cary and Dawson spent the morning at the hotel with a telephone beside
them; every few minutes the bell would ring, and a whisper of Hagan's
movements steal over the wires into the ears of the spider Dawson. He
reported progress to Cary with ever-increasing satisfaction.

"Hagan has applied for and been granted a passport to Holland, and has
booked a passage in the boat which leaves Harwich to-night for the
Hook. We will go with him. The other two spies, with the copies,
haven't turned up yet, but they are all right. My men will see them
safe across into Dutch territory, and make sure that no blundering
Customs officer interferes with their papers. This time the way of
transgressors shall be very soft. As for Hagan, he is not going to
arrive."

"I don't quite understand why you carry on so long with him," said
Cary, who, though tired, could not but feel intense interest in the
perfection of the police system and in the serene confidence of
Dawson. The Yard could, it appeared, do unto the spies precisely what
Dawson chose to direct.

"Hagan is an American citizen," explained Dawson. "If he had been a
British subject I would have taken him at Euston--we have full
evidence of the burglary, and of the stolen papers in his suit-case.
But as he is a damned unbenevolent neutral we must prove his intention
to sell the papers to Germany. Then we can deal with him by secret
court-martial.[1] The journey to Holland will prove this intention.
Hagan has been most useful to us in Ireland, and now in the North of
England and in Scotland, but he is too enterprising and too daring to
be left any longer on the string. I will draw the ends together at the
Hook."

[Footnote 1: Author's Note: This conversation is dated May, 1916.]

"I did not want to go to Holland," said Cary to me, when telling his
story. "I was utterly sick and disgusted with the whole cold-blooded
game of cat and mouse, but the police needed my evidence about the
Notes and the burglary, and did not intend to let me slip out of their
clutches. Dawson was very civil and pleasant, but I was in fact as
tightly held upon his string as was the wretched Hagan. So I went on
to Holland with that quick-change artist, and watched him come on
board the steamer at Parkeston Quay, dressed as a rather
German-looking commercial traveller, eager for war commissions upon
smuggled goods. This sounds absurd, but his get-up seemed somehow to
suggest the idea. Then I went below. Dawson always kept away from me
whenever Hagan might have seen us together."

The passage across to Holland was free from incident; there was no
sign that we were at war, and Continental traffic was being carried
serenely on, within easy striking distance of the German submarine
base at Zeebrugge. The steamer had drawn in to the Hook beside the
train, and Hagan was approaching the gangway, suit-case in hand. The
man was on the edge of safety; once upon Dutch soil, Dawson could not
have laid hands upon him. He would have been a neutral citizen in a
neutral country, and no English warrant would run against him. But
between Hagan and the gangway suddenly interposed the tall form of the
ship's captain; instantly the man was ringed about by officers, and
before he could say a word or move a hand he was gripped hard and led
across the deck to the steamer's chart-house. Therein sat Dawson, the
real, undisguised Dawson, and beside him sat Richard Cary. Hagan's
face, which two minutes earlier had been glowing with triumph and with
the anticipation of German gold beyond the dreams of avarice, went
white as chalk. He staggered and gasped as one stabbed to the heart,
and dropped into a chair. His suit-case fell from his relaxed fingers
to the floor.

"Give him a stiff brandy-and-soda," directed Dawson, almost kindly,
and when the victim's colour had ebbed back a little from his
overcharged heart, and he had drunk deep of the friendly cordial, the
detective put him out of pain. The game of cat and mouse was over.

"It is all up, Hagan," said the detective gently. "Face the music and
make the best of it, my poor friend. This is Mr. Richard Cary, and you
have not for a moment been out of our sight since you left London for
the North four days ago."

When I had completed the writing of his story I showed the MS. to
Richard Cary, who was pleased to express a general approval. "Not at
all bad, Copplestone," said he, "not at all bad. You have clothed my
dry bones in real flesh and blood. But you have missed what to me is
the outstanding feature of the whole affair, that which justifies to
my mind the whole rather grubby business. Let me give you two dates.
On May 25 two copies of my faked Notes were shepherded through to
Holland and reached the Germans; on May 31 was fought the Battle of
Jutland. Can the brief space between these dates have been merely an
accident? I cannot believe it. No, I prefer to believe that in my
humble way I induced the German Fleet to issue forth and to risk an
action which, under more favourable conditions for us, would have
resulted in their utter destruction. I may be wrong, but I am happy in
retaining my faith."

"What became of Hagan?" I asked, for I wished to bring the narrative
to a clean artistic finish.

"I am not sure," answered Cary, "though I gave evidence as ordered by
the court-martial. But I rather think that I have here Hagan's
epitaph." He took out his pocket-book, and drew forth a slip of paper
upon which was gummed a brief newspaper cutting. This he handed to me,
and I read as follows:

    "The War Office announces that a prisoner who was charged
    with espionage and recently tried by court-martial at the
    Westminster Guildhall was found guilty and sentenced to
    death. The sentence was duly confirmed and carried out
    yesterday morning."

       *       *       *       *       *

Two months passed. Summer, what little there was of it, had gone, and
my spirits were oppressed by the wet and fog and dirt of November in
the North. I desired neither to write nor to read. My one overpowering
longing was to go to sleep until the war was over and then to awake in
a new world in which a decent civilised life would once more be
possible.

In this unhappy mood I was seated before my study fire when a servant
brought me a card. "A gentleman," said she, "wishes to see you. I said
that you were engaged, but he insisted. He's a terrible man, sir."

I looked at the card, annoyed at being disturbed; but at the sight of
it my torpor fell from me, for upon it was written the name of that
detective officer whom in my story I had called William Dawson, and in
the corner were the letters "C.I.D." (Criminal Investigation
Department). I had become a criminal, and was about to be
investigated!




CHAPTER II


AT CLOSE QUARTERS

Dawson entered, and we stood eyeing one another like two strange dogs.
Neither spoke for some seconds, and then, recollecting that I was a
host in the presence of a visitor, I extended a hand, offered a chair,
and snapped open a cigarette case. Dawson seated himself and took a
cigarette. I breathed more freely. He could not design my immediate
arrest, or he would not have accepted of even so slight a hospitality.
We sat upon opposite sides of the fire, Dawson saying nothing, but
watching me in that unwinking cat-like way of his which I find so
exasperating. Many times during my association with Dawson I have
longed to spring upon him and beat his head against the floor--just to
show that I am not a mouse. If his silence were intended to make me
uncomfortable, I would give him evidence of my perfect composure.

"How did you find me out?" I asked calmly.

His start of surprise gratified me, and I saw a puzzled look come into
his eyes. "Find out what?" he muttered.

"How did you find out that I wrote a story about you?"

"Oh, that?" He grinned. "That was not difficult, Mr.--er--Copplestone.
I asked Mr.--er--Richard Cary for your real name and address, and he
had to give them to me. I was considering whether I should prosecute
both him and you."

"No doubt you bullied Cary," I said, "but you don't alarm me in the
least. I had taken precautions, and you would have found your way
barred if you had tried to touch either of us."

"It is possible," snapped Dawson. "I should like to lock up all you
writing people--you are an infernal nuisance--but you seem to have a
pull with the politicians."

We were getting on capitally: the first round was in my favour, and I
saw another opportunity of showing my easy unconcern of his powers.

"Oh no, Mr.--er--William Dawson. You would not lock us up, even if all
the authority in the State were vested in the soldiers and the police.
For who would then write of your exploits and pour upon your heads the
bright light of fame? The public knows nothing of Mr. ----" (I held up
his card), "but quite a lot of people have heard of William Dawson."

"They have," assented he, with obvious satisfaction. "I sent a copy of
the story to my Chief--just to put myself straight with him. I said
that it was all quite unauthorised, and that I would have stopped it
if I could."

"Oh no, you wouldn't. Don't talk humbug, Mr. William Dawson. During
the past two months you have pranced along the streets with your head
in the clouds. And in your own home Mrs. Dawson and the little
Dawsons--if there are any--have worshipped you as a god. There is
nothing so flattering as the sight of oneself in solid black print
upon nice white paper. Confess, now. Are you not at this moment
carrying a copy of that story of mine in your breast pocket next your
heart, and don't you flourish it before your colleagues and rivals
about six times, a day?"

Alone among mortal men I have seen a hardened detective blush.

"Throw away that cigarette," said I, "and take a cigar." I felt
generous.

Our relations were now established upon a basis satisfactory to me. I
had no inkling of the purpose of this visit, but he had lost the
advantage of mysterious attack. He had revealed human weakness and had
ceased for the moment to dominate me as a terrible engine of the law.
But I had heard too much of Dawson from Cary to be under any illusion.
He could be chaffed, even made ridiculous, without much difficulty,
but no one, however adroit, could divert him by an inch from his
professional purpose. He could joke with a victim and drink his health
and then walk him off, arm in arm, to the gallows.

"Now, Mr. Dawson," said I. "Perhaps you will tell me to what happy
circumstance I owe the honour of this visit?"

He had been chuckling over certain rich details in the Hagan
chase--with an eye, no doubt, to future enlarged editions--but these
words of mine pulled him up short. Instantly he became grave, drew
some papers from his pocket, and addressed himself to business.

"I have come to you, Mr. Copplestone, as I did to your friend Mr.
Cary, for information and assistance, and I have been advised by those
who know you here to be perfectly frank. You are not at present an
object of suspicion to the local police, who assure me, that though
you are known to have access to much secret information, yet that you
have never made any wrongful use of it. You have, moreover, been of
great assistance on many occasions both to the military and naval
authorities. Therefore, though my instinct would be to lock you up
most securely, I am told that I mustn't do it."

"You are very frank," said I. "But I bear no malice. Ask me what you
please, and I will do my best to answer fully."

"I ought to warn you," said he, with obvious reluctance, "that
anything which you say may, at some future time, be used in evidence
against you."

"I will take the risk, Mr. Dawson," cried I, laughing. "You have done
your duty in warning me, and you are so plainly hopeful that I shall
incriminate myself that it would be cruel to disappoint you. Let us
get on with the inquisition."

"You are aware, Mr. Copplestone, that a most important part of my work
consists in stopping the channels through which information of what is
going on in our shipyards and munition shops may get through to the
enemy. We can't prevent his agents from getting information--that is
always possible to those with unlimited command of money, for there
are always swine among workmen, and among higher folk than workmen,
who can be bought. You may take it as certain that little of
importance is done or projected in this country of which enemy agents
do not know. But their difficulty is to get it through to their
paymasters, within the limit of time during which the information is
useful. There are scores of possible channels, and it is up to us to
watch them all. You have already shown some grasp of our methods,
which in a sentence may be described as unsleeping vigilance. Once we
know the identity of an enemy agent, he ceases to be of any use to the
enemy, but becomes of the greatest value to us. Our motto is: Ab hoste
doceri." He pronounced the infinitive verb as if it rhymed with
glossary.

"You are quite a scholar, Mr. Dawson," remarked I politely.

"Yes," said he, simply. "I had a good schooling. I need not go into
details," he went on, "of how we watch the correspondence of suspected
persons, but you may be interested to learn that during the three
weeks which I have passed in your city all your private letters have
been through my hands."

"The devil they have," I cried angrily. "You exceed your powers. This
is really intolerable."

"Oh, you need not worry," replied Dawson serenely. "Your letters were
quite innocent. I am gratified to learn that your two sons in the
Service are happy and doing well, and that you contemplate the
publication of another book."

It was impossible not to laugh at the man's effrontery, though I felt
exasperated at his inquisitiveness. After all, there are things in
private letters which one does not wish a stranger, and a police
officer, to read.

"And how long is this outrage to continue?" I asked crossly.

"That depends upon you. As soon as I am satisfied that you are as
trustworthy as the local police and other authorities believe you to
be, your correspondence will pass untouched. It is of no use for you
to fume or try to kick up a fuss in London. Scotland Yard would open
the Home Secretary's letters if it had any cause to feel doubtful of
him."

"You cannot feel much suspicion of me or you would not tell me what
you have been doing."

"You might have thought of that at once," said Dawson derisively.

I shook myself and conceded the round to Dawson.

"It has been plain to us for a long time that the food parcels
despatched by relatives and 'god-mothers' of British prisoners in
Germany were a possible source of danger, and at last it has been
decided to stop them and to keep the despatch of food in the hands of
official organisations. Since there are now some 30,000 of military
prisoners, in addition to interned civilians at Ruhleben, the number
and complexity of the parcels have made it most difficult for a
thorough examination to be kept up. We have done our utmost, but have
been conscious that there has existed in them a channel through which
have passed communications from enemy agents to enemy employers."

"I can see the possibility, but a practical method of communication
looks difficult. How was it done?"

"In the most absurdly simple way. Real ingenuity is always simple. I
will give you an example. An English prisoner in Germany has, we will
suppose, parents in Newcastle, by whom food has been sent out
regularly. He dies in captivity, and in due course his relatives are
notified through the International Headquarters of the Red Cross in
Geneva. He is crossed off the Newcastle lists, and his parents, of
course, stop sending parcels. Now suppose that some one in Birmingham
begins to send parcels addressed to this lately deceased prisoner, his
name, unless Birmingham is very vigilant, will get upon the lists
there as that of a new live prisoner. The parcels addressed to this
name will go straight into the hands of the German Secret Service, and
a channel of communication will have been opened up between some one
in Birmingham and the enemy in Germany. Prisoners are frequently
dying, new prisoners are frequently being taken. Under a haphazard
system of individual parcels, despatched from all over the British
Isles, it has been practically impossible to keep track of all the
changes. For this, and other good reasons, we have had to make a clean
sweep and to take over the feeding of British prisoners by means of a
regular organisation which can ensure that nothing is sent with the
food which will be of any assistance to the enemy."

"That is a good job done," I observed. "Have you evidence that what is
possible has in fact been done?"

"We have," said Dawson. "Not many cases, perhaps, but sufficient to
show the existence of a very real danger. It is, indeed, one
particular instance of direct communication which has brought me to
you to-day. Orders were given not long since that all new cases, that
is, all parcels addressed to prisoners whose names were new to local
lists, should be opened and carefully examined. Some six or seven
weeks ago parcels began to be sent from this city addressed to a
lieutenant in the Northumberland Fusiliers. There was nothing
remarkable in that, for though we are some distance here from
Northumberland, young officers are gazetted to regiments which need
them irrespective of the part of the country to which the officers
themselves belong. In accordance with the new orders all the parcels
for this lieutenant--which usually consisted of bread, chocolate, and
tins of sardines--were examined. The bread was cut up, the chocolate
broken to pieces, and the tins opened. If the parcel contained nothing
contraband, fresh supplies of bread, chocolate and sardines to take
the place of those destroyed in examination were put in, and the
parcel forwarded. For the first two weeks nothing was found, but in
the third parcel, buried in one of the loaves, was discovered a
cutting from an evening newspaper which at first sight seemed quite
innocent. But a microscopic search revealed tiny needle pricks in
certain words, and the words, thus indicated, read when taken by
themselves the sentence, 'Important naval news follows.' At this stage
I was sent for. My first step was to inquire very closely into the
antecedents of this lieutenant of Northumberland Fusiliers. I found
that his friends lived at Morpeth, that he had been taken prisoner
during the Loos advance of September 1915, and that he had died about
a year later of typhoid fever in a German camp. His friends, as soon
as they had been informed, of the death, had stopped sending parcels
of food out to him. They were not told the object of the inquiries. It
would have caused them needless pain. It was bad enough that their
only son had died far from home in a filthy German prison."

Dawson's rather metallic voice became almost sympathetic, and I was
pleased to observe that his harsh profession had not destroyed in him
all human feeling.

"After this you may suppose that the parcels addressed to our poor
friend the late lieutenant were very eagerly looked for. The alleged
sender, whose name and residence were written upon the labels, was
found not to exist. Both name and address were false. It was a hot
scent, and I was delighted, after a week of waiting, to see another
parcel come in. This would, in all probability, contain the 'important
naval news,' and I took its examination upon myself. I reduced the
bread and the chocolate to powder without finding anything."

"Excuse me," I cried, intensely interested, "but how could one conceal
a paper in bread or in chocolate without leaving external traces?"

"There is no difficulty. The loaves were of the kind which have soft
ends. One cuts a deep slit, inserts the paper, closes up the cut with
a little fresh dough, and rebakes the loaf for a short time, till all
signs of the cut have disappeared. The chocolate was in eggs, not in
bars. The oval lumps can be cut open, scooped out, a paper put in, and
the two halves joined up and the cut concealed by means of a strong
mixture of chocolate paste and white of egg. When thoroughly dried in
a warm place, chocolate thus treated will stand very close scrutiny. I
did not trouble to look for signs of disturbance in either loaves or
eggs; it was quicker and easier to break them up. I then addressed my
attention to the sardine tins, which from the first had seemed the
most likely hiding-places. A very moderately skilled mechanic can
unsolder a tin, empty out the fish and oil, put in what he pleases in
place, weight judiciously, and then refasten with fresh solder. I
opened all the tins, found that all except one had been undisturbed,
but that one was a blissful reward for all my trouble, for in it was a
tightly packed mass of glazier's putty, soft and heavy, and at the
bottom the carefully folded paper which I have now the honour of
showing to you."

Dawson handed me a stiff piece of paper, slimy to the touch and
smelling strongly of white lead. Upon it were two neatly made drawings
and some lines of words and figures. "It is just what I should have
expected," said I.

"You recognise it?"

"Of course," said I. "We have here a deck plan showing the disposition
of guns, and a section plan showing arrangement of armour, of one of
the big new ships which has been completed for the Grand Fleet. Below
we have the number and calibre of the guns, the thickness and extent
of the armour, the length, breadth, and depth of the vessel, her
tonnage, her horse power, and her estimated speed. Everything is
correct except the speed, which I happen to know is considerably
greater than the figure set down."

"You have not by any chance seen that paper before?" asked Dawson,
with rather a forced air of indifference.

"This? No. Why?"

"I was curious, that's all." He looked at me with a queer, quizzical
expression, and then laughed softly. "You will understand my question
directly, but for the moment let us get on. What sort of person should
you say made those drawings and wrote that description?"

I am no Sherlock Holmes; but any one who has had some acquaintance
with engineers and their handiwork can recognise the professional
touch.

"These drawings are the work of a trained draughtsman, and the writing
is that of a draughtsman. One can tell by the neatness and the
technique of the shading."

"Right first time," said Dawson approvingly. "At present I have that
draughtsman comfortably locked up; we picked him out of the drawing
office at ----" he named a famous yard in which had been built one of
the ships of the class illustrated upon the paper in my hands.

"Poor devil," I said. "What is the cause--drink, women, or the
pressure of high prices and a large family?"

"None of them. His employers give him the best of characters, he gets
good pay, is a man over military age, and has, so far as the police
can learn, no special embarrassments. He owns his house, and has two
or three hundred pounds in the War Loan."

"Then why in the name of wonder has the _schweinehund_ sold his
country?"

"He declares that he never received a penny for supplying the
information upon that paper, and we have no evidence of any outside
payments to him. He did not attempt to conceal his handwriting, and
when I made inquiries of his firm, he owned up at once that the paper
was his work. He said that for years past he had given particulars of
ships under construction to the same parties as on this occasion. He
admitted that to do so was contrary to regulations, especially in
wartime, but thought that under the circumstances he was doing no
harm. I am not exactly a credulous person, and I have heard some tall
stories in my time, but for once I am inclined to believe that the man
is speaking the truth. I believe that he received no money, and was
acting throughout in good faith."

"I am more and more puzzled. What in the world can the circumstances
be which could induce an experienced middle-aged man, employed in
highly confidential work in a great shipyard, not only to break faith
and lose his job, but to stick his neck into a rope and his feet on
the drop of a gallows. Reveal the mystery."

"You are sure that you have never seen that paper before?" asked
Dawson again, this time slowly and deliberately.

"Of course not!" I said. "How could I?"

"That is just what I have to find out," said Dawson. He stopped, took
out a knife, prodded his nearly smoked cigar, puffed once or twice
hard to restore the draught, and spoke. "That is what interests me
just now. For, you see, this very indiscreet and reprehensible
swinehound of a draughtsman, who is at present in my lockup, declares
that he was without suspicion of serious wrong-doing, because
--because--the particulars of the new battleship upon that paper
were supplied to YOU."




CHAPTER III


AN INQUISITION

Perhaps I ought to have seen it coming, but I didn't. For a moment, as
a washerwoman might say, I was struck all of a heap. Then the
delicious thought that I--by nature a vagabond, though by decree of
the High Gods the father of a family and a Justice of the Peace--had
to face the charge of being a German spy shook my soul with ribald
laughter. I had been dull and torpid before the arrival of Dawson; he
had awakened me into joyous life. I arose, filled and lighted a large
calabash pipe, and passed a box of cigars to the detective. "Throw
that stump away and take another," said I. "I owe you more than a
cigar or two." He stared at me, took what I offered, and his face
relaxed into a grin. "It is pleasant to see that you are a man of
humour, Mr. Dawson," I observed, when we were again seated comfortably
on opposite sides of the fire. "In my day I have played many parts,
but I cannot somehow recall the incident of unsoldering a sardine tin,
inserting a paper packed in a mess of putty, soldering it up, and
despatching the incriminating product within a parcel addressed to a
late lieutenant of Northumberland Fusiliers. I am not denying the
charge; the whole affair is too delightful to be cut short. Let us
spin it out delicately like children over plates of sweet pudding."

"You are a queer customer, Mr. Copplestone. I confess that the whole
business puzzles me, though you and your friends here seem to find it
devilish amusing. When I told the Chief Constable, the manager of the
shipyard, and the Admiral Superintendent of Naval Work that you were
the guilty party, they all roared. For some reason the Admiral and the
shipyard manager kept winking at one another and gurgling till I
thought they would have choked. What _is_ the joke?"

"If you are good, Dawson, I will tell you some day. This is November,
and the _Rampagious_--the ship described on your paper--left for
Portsmouth in August. In July--" I broke off hurriedly, lest I should
tell my visitor too much. "It has taken our friend who put the paper
in the sardine tin three months to find out details of her. I could
have done better than that, Dawson."

"That is just what the Admiral said, though he wouldn't explain why."

"The truth is, Dawson, that the Admiral and I both come from Devon,
the land of pirates, smugglers, and buccaneers. We are law breakers by
instinct and family tradition. When we get an officer of the law on
toast, we like to make the most of him. It is a playful little way of
ours which I am sure you will understand and pardon."

"You know, of course, that I am justified in arresting you. I have a
warrant and handcuffs in my pocket."

"Admirable man!" I cried, with enthusiasm. "You are, Dawson, the
perfect detective. As a criminal I should be mightily afraid of you.
But, as in my buttonhole I always wear the white flower which
proclaims to the world my blameless life, I am thoroughly enjoying
this visit and our cosy chat beside the fire. Shall I telephone to my
office and say that I shall be unavoidably detained from duty for an
indefinite time? 'Detained' would be the strict truth and the _mot
juste_. If you would kindly lock me up, say, for three years or the
duration of the war I should be your debtor. I have often thought that
a prison, provided that one were allowed unlimited paper and the use
of a typewriter, would be the most charming of holidays--a perfect
rest cure. There are three books in my head which I should like to
write. Arrest me, Dawson, I implore you! Put on the handcuffs--I have
never been handcuffed--ring up a taxi, and let us be off to jail. You
will, I hope, do me the honour of lunching with me first and meeting
my wife. She will be immensely gratified to be quit of me. It cannot
often have happened in your lurid career, Dawson, to be welcomed with
genuine enthusiasm."

"Why did that man say that he prepared the description of the ship for
you?"

"That is what we are going to find out, and I will help you all I can.
My reputation is like the bloom upon the peach--touch it, and it is
gone for ever. There is a faint glimmer of the truth at the back of my
mind which may become a clear light. Did he say that he had given it
to me personally, into my own hand?"

"No. He said that he was approached by a man whom he had known off and
on for years, a man who was employed by you in connection with
shipyard inquiries. He was informed that this man was still employed
by you for the same purpose now as in the past."

"Your case against me is thinning out, Dawson. At its best it is
second-hand; at its worst, the mere conjecture of a rather careless
draughtsman. I have two things to do: first to find out the real
seducer, who is probably also the despatcher of the parcels to the
late lieutenant of Northumberland Fusiliers, and second, to save if I
can this poor fool of a shipyard draughtsman from punishment for his
folly. I don't doubt that he honestly thought he was dealing with me."

"He will have to be punished. The Admiral will insist upon that."

"We must make the punishment as light as we can. You shall help me
with all the discretionary authority with which you are equipped. I
can see, Dawson, from the tactful skill with which you have dealt with
me that discretion is among your most distinguished characteristics.
If you had been a stupid, bull-headed policeman, you would have been
up against pretty serious trouble."

"That was quite my own view," replied Dawson drily.

"Who is the man described by our erring draughtsman?"

"He won't say. We have put on every allowable method of pressure, and
some that are not in ordinary times permitted. We have had over this
spy hunt business to shed most of our tender English regard for
suspected persons, and to adopt the French system of fishing
inquiries. In France the police try to make a man incriminate himself;
in England we try our hardest to prevent him. That may be very right
and just in peace time against ordinary law breakers; but war is war,
and spies are too dangerous to be treated tenderly. We have
cross-examined the man, and bully-ragged him, but he won't give up the
name of his accomplice. It may be a relation. One thing seems sure.
The man is, or was, a member of your staff, engaged in shipyard
inquiries. Can you give me a list of the men who are or have been on
this sort of work during the past few years?"

"I will get it for you. But please use it carefully. My present men
are precious jewels, the few left to me by zealous military
authorities. What I must look for is some one over military age who
has left me or been dismissed--probably dismissed. When a British
subject, of decent education and once respectable surroundings, gets
into the hands of German agents, you may be certain of one thing,
Dawson, that he has become a rotter through drink."

"That's it," cried Dawson. "You have hit it. Crime and drink are twin
brothers as no one knows better than the police. Look out for the name
and address of a man dismissed for drunkenness and we shall have our
bird."

"The name I can no doubt give you, but not the address."

"Give us any address where he lived, even if it were ten years ago,
and we will track him down in three days. That is just routine police
work."

"I never presume to teach an expert his business--and you, Dawson, are
a super-expert, a director-general of those of common qualities--but
would it not be well to warn all the Post Offices, so that when
another parcel is brought in addressed to the lieutenant the bearer
may be arrested?"

Dawson sniffed. "Police work; common police work. It was done at once
for this city and fifty miles round. No parcel was put in last week.
The warning has since been extended to the whole of the United
Kingdom. We may get our man this week, or at least a messenger of his,
but no news has yet come to me. I will lunch with you, as you so
kindly suggest, and afterwards I want you to come with me to see the
draughtsman in the lockup. You may be able to shake his confounded
obstinacy. Run the pathetic stunt. Say if he keeps silent that you
will be arrested, your home broken up, your family driven into the
workhouse, and you yourself probably shot. Pitch it strong and rich.
He is a bit of a softy from the look of him. That tender-hearted lot
are always the most obstinate when asked to give away their pals."

"Do you know, Dawson," I said, as he went upstairs with me to have a
lick and a polish, as he put it--"I am inclined to agree with Cary
that you are rather an inhuman beast."

My wife, with whom I could exchange no more than a dozen words and a
wink or two, gripped the situation and played up to it in the fashion
which compels the admiration and terror of mere men. Do they humbug
us, their husbands, as they do the rest of the world on our behalf?
She met Dawson as if he were an old family friend, heaped hospitality
upon him, and chaffed him blandly as if to entertain a police officer
with a warrant and handcuffs in his pocket were the best joke in the
world. "My husband, Mr. Dawson, needs a holiday very badly, but won't
take one. He thinks that the war cannot be pursued successfully unless
he looks after it himself. If you would carry him off and keep him
quiet for a bit, I should be deeply grateful." She then fell into a
discussion with Dawson of the most conveniently situated prisons. Mrs.
Copplestone dismissed Dartmoor and Portland as too bleakly situated,
but was pleased to approve of Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight--which I
rather fancy is a House of Detention for women. She insisted that the
climate of the Island was suited to my health, and wrung a promise
from Dawson that I should, if possible, be interned there. Dawson's
manners and conversation surprised me. His homespun origin was
evident, yet he had developed an easy social style which was neither
familiar nor aggressive. We were in his eyes eccentrics, possibly what
he would call among his friends "a bit off," and he bore himself
towards us accordingly. My small daughter, Jane, to whom he had been
presented as a colonel of police--little Jane is deeply versed in
military ranks--took to him at once, and his manner towards her
confirmed my impression that some vestiges of humanity may still be
discovered in him by the patient searcher. She insisted upon sitting
next to him and in holding his hand when it was not employed in
conveying food to his mouth. She was startled at first by the
discussion upon the prisons most suitable for me, but quickly became
reconciled to the idea of a temporary separation.

"Colonel Dawson," she asked. "When daddy is in prison, may I come and
see him sometimes. Mother and me?" Dawson gripped his hair--we were
the maddest crew!--and replied. "Of course you shall, Miss Jane, as
often as you like."

"Thank you, Colonel Dawson; you are a nice man. I love you. Now show
me the handcuffs in your pocket."

For the second time that day poor Dawson blushed. He must have
regretted many times that he had mentioned to me those unfortunate
darbies. Now amid much laughter he was compelled to draw forth a
pretty shining pair of steel wristlets and permit Jane to put them on.
They were much too large for her; she could slip them on and off
without unlocking; but as toys they were a delight. "I shouldn't mind
being a prisoner," she declared, "if dear Colonel Dawson took me up."

We were sitting upon the fire-guard after luncheon, dallying over our
coffee, when Jane demanded to be shown a real arrest. "Show me how you
take up a great big man like Daddy."

Then came a surprise, which for a moment had so much in it of bitter
realism that it drove the blood from my wife's cheeks. I could not
follow Dawson's movements; his hands flickered like those of a
conjurer, there came a sharp click, and the handcuffs were upon my
wrists! I stared at them speechless, wondering how they got there,
and, looking up, met the coldly triumphant eyes of the detective. I
realised then exactly how the professional manhunter glares at the
prey into whom, after many days, he has set his claws. My wife gasped
and clutched at my elbow, little Jane screamed, and for a few seconds
even I thought that the game had been played and that serious business
was about to begin. Dawson gave us a few seconds of apprehension, and
then laughed grimly. From his waistcoat pocket he drew a key, and the
fetters were removed almost as quickly as they had been clapped on.
"Tit for tat," said he. "You have had your fun with me. Fair play is a
jewel."

Little Jane was the first to recover speech. "I knew that dear Colonel
Dawson was only playing," she cried. "He only did it to please me.
Thank you, Colonel, though you did frighten me just a weeny bit at
first." And pulling him down towards her she kissed him heartily upon
his prickly cheek. It was a queer scene.

The door bell rang loudly, and we were informed that a policeman stood
without who was inquiring for Chief Inspector Dawson. "Show him in
here," said I. The constable entered, and his manner of addressing my
guest--that of a raw second lieutenant towards a general of
division--shed a new light upon Dawson's pre-eminence in his Service.
"A telegram for you, sir." Dawson seized it, was about to tear it
open, remembered suddenly his hostess, and bowed towards her. "Have I
your permission, madam?" he asked. She smiled and nodded; I turned
away to conceal a laugh. "Good," cried Dawson, poring over the
message. "I think, Mr. Copplestone, that you had better telephone to
your office and say that you are unavoidably detained."

"What--what is it?" cried my wife, who had again become white with
sudden fear.

"Something which will occupy the attention of your husband and myself
to the exclusion of all other duties. This telegram informs me that a
parcel has been handed in at Carlisle and the bearer arrested."

"Excellent!" I cried. "My time is at your disposal, Dawson. We shall
now get full light."

He sat down and scribbled a reply wire directing the parcel and its
bearer to be brought to him with all speed. "They should arrive in two
or three hours," said he, "and in the meantime we will tackle the
draughtsman who made that plan of the battleship. Good-bye Mrs.
Copplestone, and thank you very much for your hospitality. Your
husband goes with me." My wife shook hands with Dawson, and politely
saw him off the premises. She has said little to me since about his
visit, but I do not think that she wishes ever to meet with him again.
Little Jane, who kissed him once more at parting, is still attached to
the memory of her colonel.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dawson led me to the private office at the Central Police Station,
which was his temporary headquarters, and sent for the dossier of the
locked up draughtsman. "I have here full particulars of him," said he,
"and a verbatim note of my examination." I examined the photograph
attached, which represented a bearded citizen of harmless aspect; over
his features had spread a scared, puzzled look, with a suggestion in
it of pathetic appeal. He looked like a human rabbit caught in an
unexpected and uncomprehended trap. It was a police photograph. Then I
began to read the dossier, but got no farther than the first
paragraph. In it was set out the man's name, those of his wife and
children, his employment, record of service, and so on. What arrested
my researches was the maiden name of the wife, which, in accordance
with the northern custom, had been entered as a part of her legal
description. The name awoke in me a recollection of a painful incident
within my experience. I saw before me the puffed, degraded face of one
to whom I had given chance after chance of redeeming himself from
thraldom to the whisky bottle, one who had promised again and again to
amend his ways. At last, wearied, I had cast him out. He had been
looking after an important shipbuilding district, had conspicuous
ability and knowledge, the support of a faithful wife. But nothing
availed to save him from himself. "Give me five minutes alone with
your prisoner," I said to Dawson, "and I will give you the spy you
seek."

I had asked for five minutes, but two were sufficient for my purpose.
The draughtsman had been obstinate with Dawson, seeking loyally to
shield his wretched brother-in-law, but when he found that I had the
missing thread in my hands, he gave in at once. "What relation is ----
to your wife?" I asked. He had risen at my entrance, but the question
went through him like a bullet; his pale face flushed, he staggered
pitifully, and, sitting down, buried his face in his hands. "You may
tell the truth now," I said gently. "We can easily find out what we
must know, but the information will come better from you."

"He is my wife's brother," murmured the man.

"You knew that he was no longer in my service?"

"Yes, I knew."

I might fairly have asked why he had used my name, but refrained. One
can readily pardon the lapses of an honest man, terrified at finding
himself in the coils of the police, clinging to the good name of his
wife and her family, clutching at any device to throw the
sleuth-hounds of the law off the real scent. He had given his
brother-in-law forbidden information from a loyal desire to help him
and with no knowledge of the base use to which it would be put. When
detected, he had sought at any cost to shield him.

"I will do my best to help you," I said.

His head drooped down till it rested upon his bent arms, and he
groaned and panted under the torture of tears. His was not the stuff
of which criminals are made.

I found Dawson's chuckling joy rather repulsive. I felt that, being
successful, he might at least have had the decency to dissemble his
satisfaction. He might also have given me some credit for the rapid
clearing up of the problem in detection. But he took the whole thing
to himself, and gloated like a child over his own cleverness. I
neither obtained from him thanks for my assistance nor apologies for
his suspicions. It was Dawson, Dawson, all the time. Yet I found his
egotism and unrelieved vanity extraordinarily interesting. As we sat
together in his room waiting for the Carlisle train to come in he
discoursed freely to me of his triumphs in detection, his wide-spread
system of spying upon spies, his long delayed "sport" with some, and
his ruthless rapid trapping of others. Men are never so interesting as
when they talk shop, and as a talker of shop Dawson was sublime.

"If," said Dawson, as the time approached for the closing scene, "our
much-wanted friend has himself handed in the parcel at Carlisle--he
would be afraid to trust an accomplice--our job will be done. If not,
I will pull a drag net through this place which will bring him up
within a day or two. What a fool the man is to think that he could
escape the eye of Bill Dawson."

A policeman entered, laid a packet upon the table before us, and
announced that the prisoner had been placed in cell No. 2. Dawson
sprang up. "We will have a look at him through the peephole, and if it
is our man--" One glance was enough. Before me I saw him whom I had
expected to see. He and his cargo of whisky bottles had reached the
last stage of their long journey; at one end had been peace, reasonable
prosperity, and a happy home; at the other was, perhaps, a rope or a
bullet.

Dawson began once more to descant upon his own astuteness, but I was
too sick at heart to listen. I remembered only the visit years before
which that man's wife had paid to me. "Will you not open the parcel?"
I interposed. He fell upon it, exposed its contents of bread,
chocolate, and sardine tins, and called for a can opener. He shook the
tins one by one beside his ear, and then, selecting that which gave
out no "flop" of oil, stripped it open, plunged his fingers inside,
and pulled forth a clammy mess of putty and sawdust. In a moment he
had come upon a paper which after reading he handed to me. It bore the
words in English, "Informant arrested: dare not send more."

"What a fool!" cried Dawson. "As if the evidence against him were not
sufficient already he must give us this."

"You will let that poor devil of a draughtsman down easily?" I
murmured.

"We want him as a witness," replied Dawson. "Tit for tat. If he helps
us, we will help him. And now we will cut along to the Admiral. He is
eager for news."

We broke in upon the Admiral in his office near the shipyards, and he
greeted me with cheerful badinage. "So you are in the hands of the
police at last, Copplestone. I always told you what would be the end
of your naval inquisitiveness."

Dawson told his story, and the naval officer's keen kindly face grew
stern and hard. "Germans I can respect," said he, "even those that
pretend to be our friends. But one of our own folk--to sell us like
this--ugh! Take the vermin away; Dawson, and stamp upon it."

We stood talking for a few moments, and then Dawson broke in with a
question. "I have never understood, Admiral, why you were so very
confident that Mr. Copplestone here had no hand in this business. The
case against him looked pretty ugly, yet you laughed at it all the
time. Why were you so sure?"

The Admiral surveyed Dawson as if he were some strange creature from
an unknown world. "Mr. Copplestone is a friend of mine," said he
drily.

"Very likely," snapped the detective. "But is a man a white angel
because he has the honour to be your friend?"

"A fair retort," commented the Admiral. It happens that I had other
and better reasons. For in July I myself showed Mr. Copplestone over
the new battleship _Rampagious_, and after our inspection we both
lunched with the builders and discussed her design and armament in
every detail. So as Mr. Copplestone knew all about her in July, he was
not likely to suborn a draughtsman in November. See?"

"You should have told me this before. It was your duty."

"My good Dawson," said the Admiral gently, "you are an excellent
officer of police, but even you have a few things yet to learn. I had
in my mind to give you a lesson, especially as I owed you some
punishment for your impertinence in opening my friend Copplestone's
private letters. You have had the lesson; profit by it."

Dawson flushed angrily. "Punishment! Impertinence! This to me!"

"Yes," returned the Admiral stiffly, "beastly impertinence."




CHAPTER IV


SABOTAGE

Dawson showed no malice towards the Admiral or myself for our
treatment of him. I do not think that he felt any; he was too fully
occupied in collecting the spoils of victory to trouble his head about
what a Scribbler or a Salt Horse might think of him. He gathered to
himself every scrap of credit which the affair could be induced to
yield, and received--I admit quite deservedly--the most handsome
encomiums from his superiors in office. During the two weeks he passed
in my city after the capture--weeks occupied in tracing out the
threads connecting his wretch of a prisoner with the German agents
upon what Dawson called his "little list"--he paid several visits both
to my house and my office. His happiness demanded that he should read
to me the many letters which poured in from high officials of the
C.I.D., from the Chief Commissioner, and on one day--a day of days in
the chronicles of Dawson--from the Home Secretary himself. To me it
seemed that all these astute potentates knew their Dawson very
thoroughly, and lubricated, as it were, with judicious flattery the
machinery of his energies. I could not but admire Dawson's truly royal
faculty for absorbing butter. The stomachs of most men, really good at
their business, would have revolted at the diet which his superiors
shovelled into Dawson, but he visibly expanded and blossomed. Yes,
Scotland Yard knew its Dawson, and exactly how to stimulate the best
that was in him. He never bored me; I enjoyed him too thoroughly.

One day in my club I chanced upon the Admiral.

"Have you met our friend Dawson lately?" I asked.

"Met him?" shouted he, with a roar of laughter. "Met him? He is in my
office every day--he almost lives with me; goodness knows when he does
his work. He has a pocket full of letters which he has read to me till
I know them by heart. If I did not know that he was a first-class man
I should set him down as a colossal ass. Yet, I rather wish that the
Admiralty would sometimes write to me as the severe but very human
Scotland Yard does to Dawson."

"Does he ever come to you in disguise?" I asked.

"Not that I know of. I see vast numbers of people; some of them may be
Dawson in his various incarnations, but he has not given himself
away."

Then I explained to my naval friend my own experience. "He tried," I
said, "to play the disguise game on me, and clean bowled me the first
time. While he was laughing over my discomfiture I studied his face
more closely than a lover does that of his mistress. I tried to
penetrate his methods. He never wears a wig or false hair; he is too
wise for that folly. Yet he seems able to change his hair from light
to dark, to make it lank or curly, short or long. He does it; how I
don't know. He alters the shape of his nose, his cheeks, and his chin.
I suppose that he pads them out with little rubber insets. He alters
his voice, and his figure, and even his height. He can be stiff and
upright like a drilled soldier, or loose-jointed and shambling like a
tramp. He is a finished artist, and employs the very simplest means.
He could, I truly believe, deceive his wife or his mother, but he will
never again deceive me. I am not a specially observant man; still one
can make a shot at most things when driven to it, and I object to
being the subject of Dawson's ribaldry. If you will take my tip, you
will be able to spot him as readily as I do now."

"Good. I should love to score off Dawson. He is an aggravating beast."

"Study his ears," said I. "He cannot alter their chief characters. The
lobes of his ears are not loose, like yours or mine or those of most
men and women; his are attached to the back of his cheekbones. My
mother had lobes like those, so had the real Roger Tichborne; I
noticed Dawson's at once. Also at the top fold of his ears he has
rather a pronounced blob of flesh. This blob, more prominent in some
men than in others, is, I believe, a surviving relic of the sharp
point which adorned the ears of our animal ancestors. Dawson's
ancestor must have been a wolf or a bloodhound. Whenever now I have a
strange caller who is not far too tall or far too short to be Dawson,
if a stranger stops me in the street to ask for a direction, if a
porter at a station dashes up to help me with my bag, I go for his
ears. If the lobes are attached to the cheekbones and there is a
pronounced blob in the fold at the top, I address the man instantly as
Dawson, however impossibly unlike Dawson he may be. I have spotted him
twice now since he bowled me out, and he is frightfully savage--especially
as I won't tell him how the trick is done. He says that it is my duty to
tell him, and that he will compel me under some of his beloved Defence of
the Realm Regulations. But the rack could not force me to give away my
precious secret. Cherish it and use it. You will not tell, for you love
to mystify the ruffian as much as I do."

"I will watch for his ears when he next calls, which, I expect, will
be to-morrow. Thank you very much. I won't sneak."

"Remember that nothing else in the way of identification is of any
use, for I doubt if either of us has ever seen the real, undisguised
Dawson as he is known to God. We know a man whom we think is the
genuine article--but is he? Cary's description of him is most unlike
the man whom we see here. I expect that he has a different identity
for every place which he visits. If he told me that at any moment he
was wholly undisguised, I should be quite sure that he was lying. The
man wallows in deception for the very sport of the thing. But he can't
change his ears. Study them, and you will be safe."

Our club was the only place in which we could be sure that Dawson did
not penetrate, though I should not have been surprised to learn that
one or two of the waitresses were in his pay. Dawson is an ardent
feminist; he says that as secret agents women beat men to a frazzle.

Shortly before Dawson left for his headquarters on the north-east
coast he dropped in upon me. He had finished his researches, and
revealed the results to me with immense satisfaction.

"I have fixed up Menteith," he began, "and know exactly how he came
into communication with the German Secret Service." The contemptuous
emphasis which he laid on the word "Secret" would have annoyed the
Central Office at Potsdam. I have given the detected British spy the
name of Menteith after that of the most famous traitor in Scottish
history; if I called him, say, Campbell or Macdonald, nothing could
save me from the righteous vengeance of the outraged Clans.

"It was all very simple," he went on, "like most things in my business
when one gets to the bottom of them. He was seduced by a man whom the
local police have had on their string for a long time, but who will
now be put securely away. Menteith was a frequenter of a certain
public house down the river, where he posed as an authority on the
Navy, and hinted darkly at his stores of hidden information. Our
German agent made friends with him, gave him small sums for drinks,
and flattered his vanity. It is strange how easily some men are
deceived by flattery. The agent got from Menteith one or two bits of
news by pretending a disbelief in his sources of intelligence, and
then, when the fool had committed himself, threatened to denounce him
to the police unless he took service with him altogether. Money, of
course, passed, but not very much. The Germans who employ spies so
extensively pay them extraordinarily little. They treat them like
scurvy dogs, for whom any old bone is good enough, and I'm not sure
they are not right. They go on the principle that the white trash who
will sell their country need only to be paid with kicks and coppers.
Menteith swears that he did not receive more than four pounds for the
plans and description of the _Rampagious_. Fancy selling one's country
and risking one's neck for four measly pounds sterling! If he had got
four thousand, I should have had some respect for him. His home is in
a wretched state, and his wife--a pretty woman, though almost a
skeleton, and a very nicely mannered, honest woman--says that her
husband unexpectedly gave her four pounds a month ago. He had kept
none of the blood money for drink! Curious, isn't it?"

"It shows that the man had some good in him. It shows that he was
ashamed to use the money upon himself. We must do something for the
poor wife, Dawson."

"She will easily get work, and she will be far better without her sot
of a husband. She did not cry when I told her everything. 'I ought to
have left him long ago,' she said, 'but I tried to save him. Thank God
we have no children,' That seemed to be her most insistent thought,
for she repeated it over and over again. 'Thank God that we have no
children.'"

"I hope that you were gentle with her, Dawson," said I, deeply moved.
Long ago the wife had come to me and pleaded for her husband. She had
shed no tear; she had admitted the justice, the necessity, of my
sentence. "Can you not give him another chance?" she had asked. "No,"
I had answered sadly. "He has exhausted all the chances." When she had
risen to go and I had pressed her hand, she had said, still dry-eyed,
"You are right, sir, it is no use, no use at all. Thank God that we
have no children."

"I hope that you were gentle with her, Dawson," I repeated.

He astonished me by the suddenness of his explosion. "Damn," roared
he--"damn and blast! Do you think that I am a brute. Gentle! It was as
much as I could do not to kiss the woman, as your little daughter
kissed me, and to promise that I would get her husband off somehow.
But I should not be a friend to her if I tried to save that man."

So Dawson had soft spots in his armour of callousness, and little
Jane's instinct was far surer than mine. She had taken to him at
sight. When I tried to get from her why, why he had so marked an
attraction for her, her replies baffled me more than the central fact.
"I love Colonel Dawson. He is a nice man. He has a little girl like
me. Her name is Clara. Her birthday is next month. I shall save up my
pocket money and send Clara a present. I like Colonel Dawson better
even than dear Bailey." I tore my hair, for "Bailey" is a wholly
imaginary friend of little Jane, whom I invented one evening at her
bedside and who has grown gradually into a personage of clearly
defined attributes--like the "Putois" of Anatole France. Dawson and
"Bailey"; they are both "nice men" and little Jane's friends; she is
sure of them, and I expect that she is right. Children always are
right.

Dawson, after his outburst, glowered at me for a moment and then
laughed. "I am a man," said he, "though you may not think it, and I
have my weaknesses. But I never give way to them when they interfere
with business. Menteith is in my grip, and he won't get out of it. But
he is a poor creature. He handed over the description of the
_Rampagious_, saw it hidden in the sardine tin, and was ordered to
take the food parcel to the Post Office. The German agent who used him
had no notion of risking his own skin. Then followed the discovery and
the arrest of the draughtsman who had drawn the plan. Those who had
seduced Menteith forbade him to come near them. They slipped away into
hiding--which profited them little since all of them were on our
string--after threatening Menteith that he would be murdered if he
gave himself up to the police, as in his terror he seemed to want to
do. When nothing happened for two weeks, the vermin came out of their
holes, made up the last parcel, and forced Menteith to go to Carlisle
in order to post it. All through he has been the most abject of tools,
and received nothing except the four pounds and various small sums
spent in drinks."

"You have the principal all right?"

"Yes, I have him tight. The others associated with him I shall leave
free; they will be most useful in future. They don't know that we know
them; when they do know, their number will go up, for they will be
then of no further use to us. It is a beautiful system, Mr. Copplestone,
and you have had the unusual privilege of seeing it at work."

"What will your prisoners get by way of punishment?"

"I am not sure, but I can guess pretty closely. The principal will go
out suddenly early some morning. He is a Jew of uncertain Central
European origin, Pole or Czech, a natural born British subject, a
shining light of a local anti-German society, an 'indispensable' in
his job and exempted from military service. He will give no more
trouble. Menteith will spend anything from seven to ten years in p.s.,
learn to do without his daily whisky bottle, and possibly come out a
decent citizen. The draughtsman, I expect, will be let off with
eighteen months of the Jug. We are just, but not harsh. My birds don't
interest me much once they have been caught; it is the catching that I
enjoy. Down in the south, where I have a home of my own--which I
haven't seen during the past year except occasionally for an hour or
two--I used to grow big show chrysanthemums. All through the processes
of rooting the cuttings, repotting, taking the buds, feeding up the
plants, I never could endure any one to touch them. But once the
flowers were fully developed, my wife could cut them as much as she
pleased and fill the house with them. My job was done when I had got
the flowers perfect. It is just the same with my business. I cultivate
the little dears I am after, and hate any one to interfere with me; I
humour them and water them and feed them with opportunities till they
are ripe, and then I stick out my hand and grab them. After that the
law can do what it likes with them; they ain't my concern any more."

By this time it had become apparent even to my slow intelligence why
Dawson told me so much about himself and his methods. He had formed
the central figure in a real story in print, and the glory of it
possessed him. He had tasted of the rich sweet wine of fame, and he
thirsted for more of the same vintage. He never in so many words asked
me to write this book, but his eagerness to play Dr. Johnson to my
Boswell appeared in all our relations. He was communicative far beyond
the limits of official discretion. If I now disclosed half, or a
quarter, of what he told me of the inner working of the Secret
Service, Scotland Yard, which admires and loves him, would cast him
out, lock him up securely in gaol, and prepare for me a safe
harbourage in a contiguous cell. So for both our sakes I must be very,
very careful.

"You have been most helpful to me," he said handsomely at parting,
"and if anything good turns up on the North-East coast, I will let you
know. Could you come if I sent for you?"

"I would contrive to manage it," said I.

Dawson went away, and the pressure of daily work and interests thrust
him from my mind. For a month I heard nothing of him or of Cary, and
then one morning came a letter and a telegram. The letter was from
Richard Cary, and read as follows: "A queer thing has happened here.
A cruiser which had come in for repair was due to go out this morning.
She was ready for sea the night before, the officers and crew had all
come back from short leave, and the working parties had cleared out.
Then in the middle watch, when the torpedo lieutenant was testing the
circuits, it was discovered that all the cables leading to the guns
had been cut. Dawson has been called in, and bids me say that, if you
can come down, now is the chance of your life. I will put you up."

The telegram was from Dawson himself. It ran: "They say I'm beaten.
But I'm not. Come and see."

"The deuce," said I. "Sabotage! I am off."




CHAPTER V


BAFFLED

When at last I arrived at Cary's flat it was very late, and I was
exceedingly tired and out of temper. A squadron of Zeppelins had been
reported from the sea, the air-defence control at Newcastle had sent
out the preliminary warning "F.M.W.," and the speed of my train had
been reduced to about fifteen miles an hour. I had expected to get in
to dinner, but it was eleven o'clock before I reached my destination.
I had not even the satisfaction of seeing a raid, for the Zepps, made
cautious by recent heavy losses, had turned back before crossing the
line of the coast. Cary and his wife fell upon my neck, for we were
old friends, condoled with me, fed me, and prescribed a tall glass of
mulled port flavoured with cloves. My stern views upon the need for
Prohibition in time of war became lamentably weakened.

By midnight I had recovered my philosophic outlook upon life, and Cary
began to enlighten me upon the details of the grave problem which had
brought me eagerly curious to his city.

"I expect that Dawson will drop in some time to-night," he said. "All
hours are the same to him. I told him that you were on the way, and he
wants to give you the latest news himself. He is dead set upon you,
Copplestone. I can't imagine why."

"Am I then so very unattractive?" I inquired drily. "It seems to me
that Dawson is a man of sound judgment."

"I confess that I do not understand why he lavishes so much attention
upon you."

"Your remarks, Cary," I observed, "are deficient in tact. You might,
at least, pretend to believe that my personal charm has won for me
Dawson's affection. As a matter of fact, he cares not a straw for my
_beaux yeux_; his motives are crudely selfish. He thinks that it is in
my power to contribute to the greater glory of Dawson, and he
cultivates me just as he would one of his show chrysanthemums. He has
done me the honour to appoint me his biographer extraordinary."

"I am sure you are wrong," cried Cary. "He was most frightfully angry
about that story of ours in _Cornhill_. He demanded from me your name
and address, and swore that if I ever again disclosed to you official
secrets he would proceed against me under the Defence of the Realm
Act. He was a perfect terror, I can assure you."

"And yet he always carries that story about with him in his
breast-pocket; he has summoned me here to see him at his work; and you
have been commanded to tell me everything which you know! My dear
Cary, do not be an ass. You are too simple a soul for this rather
grubby world. In your eyes every politician is an ardent,
disinterested patriot, and every soldier or sailor a knightly hero of
romance. Human beings, Cary, are made in streaks, like bacon; we have
our fat streaks and our lean ones; we can be big and bold, and also
very small and mean. Your great man and your national hero can become
very poor worms when, so to speak, they are off duty. But I didn't
come here, at great inconvenience, to talk this sort of stuff at
midnight. Go ahead; give me the details of this sabotage case which is
baffling Dawson and the naval authorities; let me hear about the
cutting of those electric wires."

"It is, as I told you, in my note, a queer business. The _Antinous_, a
fast light cruiser, came in about a fortnight ago to have some defects
made good in her high-speed geared-turbines. There was not much wrong,
but her engineer commander recommended a renewal of some of the spur
wheels. The officers and crew went on short leave in rotation, a care
and maintenance party was put in charge, and the builders placed a
working gang on board which was occupied in shifts, by night and by
day, in making good the defects. When a ship is under repair in a
river basin, it is practically impossible to keep up the beautiful
order and discipline of a ship at sea. Men of all kinds are constantly
coming and going, life on board is stripped of the most ordinary
comforts and conveniences, there is inevitably some falling off in
strict supervision. Lack of space, lack of facilities for moving about
the ship, lack of any regular routine. You will understand. Just as
the expansion in the New Army and the New Navy has made it possible
for unknown enemy agents to take service in the Army and the Navy, so
the dilution of labour in the shipyards has made it possible for
workmen--whose sympathies are with the enemy--to get employment about
the warships. The danger is fully recognised, and that is where
Dawson's widespread system of counter-espionage comes in. There is not
a trade union, among all the eighteen or twenty engaged in shipyard
work--riveters, fitters, platers, joiners, and all the rest of
them--in which he has not police officers enrolled as skilled
tradesmen, members of the unions, working as ordinary hands or as
foremen, sometimes even in office as "shop stewards" representing the
interest of the unions and acting as their spokesmen in disputes with
the employers. Dawson claims that there has never yet been a secret
Strike Committee, since the war began, upon which at least one of his
own men was not serving. He is a wonderful man. I don't like him; he
is too unscrupulous and merciless for my simple tastes; but his value
to the country is beyond payment."

"But where in the world does he raise these men? One can't turn a
policeman into a skilled worker at a moment's notice. How is it done?"

"He begins at the other end. All his skilled workmen are the best he
can pick out of their various trades. They have served their full time
as apprentices and journeymen. They are recommended to him by their
employers after careful testing and sounding. Most of them, I believe,
come from the Government dockyards and ordnance factories. They are
given a course of police training at Scotland Yard, and then dropped
down wherever they may be wanted. Dawson, and inspectors like him,
have these men everywhere--in shipyards, in shell shops, in gun
factories, in aeroplane sheds, everywhere. They take a leading part in
the councils of the unions wherever they go, for they add to their
skill as workmen a pronounced, even blatant parade of loyalty to the
interests of trade unions and a tasty flavour of socialist principles.
Dawson is perfectly cynically outspoken to me over the business which,
I confess, appals me. In his female agents--of which he has many--he
favours what he calls a 'judicious frailty'; in his male agents he
favours a subtle skill in the verbal technique of anarchism. And this
man Dawson is by religion a Peculiar Baptist, in private life a
faithful husband and a loving father, and in politics a strict Liberal
of the Manchester School! As a man he is good, honest, and rather
narrow; as a professional detective he is base and mean, utterly
without scruple, and a Jesuit of Jesuits. With him the end justifies
the means, whatever the means may be."

"And yet you admit that his value to the country is beyond payment.
Dawson--our remarkable Dawson of the double life in the two
compartments, professional and private, which never are allowed to
overlap--Dawson is an instrument of war. We do not like using gas or
liquid fire, but we are compelled to use them. We do not like
espionage, but we must employ it. As one who loves this fair land of
England beyond everything in the world, and as one who would do
anything, risk anything, and suffer anything to shield her from the
filthy Germans, I rejoice that she has in her service such supremely
efficient guardians as this most wickedly unscrupulous Dawson. There
is, at any rate, not a trace of our English muddle about him."

"Ours is a righteous cause," cried poor Cary desperately. "We are
fighting for right against wrong, for defence against aggression, for
civilisation against utter barbarism. We are by instinct clean
fighters. If in the stress of conflict we stoop to foul methods, can
we ever wash away the filth of them from our souls? We shall stand
before the world nakedly confessed as the nation of hypocrites we have
always been declared to be."

"Cary," I said, "you make me tired. We cannot be too thankful that we
possess Dawsons to counterplot against the Germans, and that
personally we are in no way responsible for the morality of their
methods. Come off the roof and get back to this most interesting
affair of the _Antinous_. I presume one of Dawson's men was working,
unknown to his fellows, with the care and maintenance party, and
another, equally unknown, with the engineers who were busy upon the
gearing of the turbines. Many of the regular ship's officers and men
would also have been on board. Had our remarkable friend his agents
among them too? Everything is possible with Dawson; I should not be
surprised to hear that he had police officers in the Fleet flagship."

"You are almost right. One of his men, a temporary petty officer of
R.N.V.R., was certainly on board, and he tells me that down in the
engine room was another--a civilian fitter. They were both first-class
men. The electric wires, as you know, are carried about the ship under
the deck beams, where they are accessible for examination and repairs.
They are coiled in cables from which wires are led to the switch room,
and thence to all parts of the ship. There are thousands of wires, and
no one who did not know intimately their purpose and disposition could
venture to tamper with them, for great numbers are always in use. If
any one cut the lighting wires, for instance, the defects would be
obvious at once; so with the heating or telephone wires. Nothing was
touched except the lines to the guns, of which there are eight
disposed upon the deck. From the guns connections run to the switch
room, the conning tower, the gunnery control platform aloft, and to
the gunnery officer's bridge. It was the main cable between the switch
room and the conning tower which was cut, and it was one cable laid
alongside a dozen others. Now who could know that this was the gun
cable, and the only one in which damage might escape detection while
the ship was in harbour? At sea there is constant gun drill, during
which the electrical controls and the firing-tubes are always tested,
but in harbour the guns are lying idle most of the time. It was
evidently the intention of the enemy, who cut these wires, that the
_Antinous_ should go to sea before the defect was discovered, and that
her fire control should be out of action till the wiring system could
be repaired. That very serious disaster was prevented by the
preliminary testing during the night before sailing, but the enemy has
been successful in delaying the departure of an invaluable light
cruiser for two days. In these days, when the war of observation is
more important even than the war of fighting, the services of light
cruisers cannot be dispensed with for an hour without grave
inconvenience and risk. Yet here was one delayed for forty-eight hours
after her ordinary repairs had been completed. The naval authorities
are in a frightful stew. For what has happened to the _Antinous_ may
happen to other cruisers, even to battleships. If there is sabotage
among the workmen in the shipyards, it must be discovered and stamped
out without a moment's delay. This time it is the cutting of a wire
cable; at another time it may be some wilful injury far more serious.
A warship is a mass of delicate machinery to which a highly skilled
enemy agent might do almost infinite damage. Dawson has been run off
his feet during the past two days; I don't know what he has
discovered; but if he does not get to the bottom of the business in
double-quick time we shall have the whole Board of Admiralty, Scotland
Yard, and possibly the War Cabinet down upon us. Think, too, of the
disgrace to this shipbuilding city of which we are all so proud."

"We shall know something soon," I said, "for, if I mistake not, here
comes Dawson." The electric bell at the front door had buzzed, and
Cary, slipping from the room, presently returned with a man who to me,
at the first glance, was a complete stranger. I sprang up, moved round
to a position whence I could see clearly the visitor's ears, and
gasped. It was Dawson beyond a doubt, but it was not the Dawson whom I
had known in the north. So what I had vaguely surmised was
true--Cary's Dawson and Copplestone's Dawson were utterly unlike.
Dawson winked at me, glanced towards Cary, and shook his head; from
which I gathered that he did not desire his appearance to be the
subject of comment. I therefore greeted him without remark, and, as he
sat down under the electric lights, examined him in detail. This
Dawson was ten years older than the man whom I had known and fenced
with. The hair of this one was lank and grey, while that of mine was
brown and curly; the face of this one was white and thin, while the
face of mine was rather full and ruddy. The teeth were different--I
found out afterwards that Dawson, who had few teeth of his own,
possessed several artificial sets of varied patterns--the shape of the
mouth was different, the nose was different. I could never have
recognised the man before me had I not possessed that clue to identity
furnished by his unchanging ears.

"So, Dawson," said I slowly, "we meet again. Permit me to say that I
congratulate you. It is very well done."

He grinned and glanced at the unconscious Cary. "You are learning.
Bill Dawson takes a bit of knowing."

"Have you any news, Mr. Dawson?" asked Cary eagerly.

"Not much. The wires of the _Antinous_ have all been renewed--the
Admiralty won't allow cables to be patched except at sea--but I
haven't found out who played hanky-panky with them. It could not have
been any one in the engine-room party, as none of them went near the
place where the wires were cut. Besides, they were engineers, not
electricians, and could have known nothing of the arrangements and
disposition of the ship's wires. My man who worked with them is
positive that they are a sound, good lot without a sea-lawyer or a
pacifist among them; a gang of plain, honest tykes. So we are thrown
back on the maintenance party, included in which were all sorts of
ratings. Some of them are skilled in the electrical fittings--my own
man with them is, for one--but we get the best accounts of all of
them. They are long service men, cast for sea owing to various medical
reasons, but perfectly efficient for harbour work. Among the officers
of the ship is a R.N.R. lieutenant with a German name. I jumped to
him, but the captain laughed. The man's father and grandfather were in
the English merchant service, and though his people originally came
from Saxony, he is no more German than we are ourselves. Besides, my
experience is that an Englishman with an inherited German name is the
very last man to have any truck with the enemy. He is too much ashamed
of his forbears for one thing; and for another he is too dead set on
living down his beastly name. So we will rule out the Lieutenant
R.N.R. My own man, who is a petty officer R.N.V.R., and has worked on
a lot of ships which have come in for repairs, says that the temper
among the workmen in the yards is good now. It was ugly when dilution
of labour first came in, but the wages are so high that all that
trouble has settled down. I have had what you call sabotage in the
shell and gun shops, but never yet in the King's ships. We have had
every possible cutter of the wires on the mat before the Captain and
me. We have looked into all their records, had their homes visited and
their people questioned, inquired of their habits--Mr. Copplestone,
here, knows what comes of drink--and found out how they spend their
wages. Yet we have discovered nothing. It is the worst puzzle that
I've struck. When and how the gun cable was cut I can't tell you, but
whoever did it is much too clever to be about. He must have been
exactly informed of the lie and use of the cables, had with him the
proper tools, and used them in some fraction of a minute when he
wasn't under the eye of my own man whose business it was to watch
everybody and suspect everybody. I thought that I had schemed out a
pretty thorough system; up to now it has worked fine. Whenever we have
had the slightest reason to suspect any man, we have had him kept off
the ship and watched. We have run down a lot of footling spies, too
stupid to give us a minute's anxiety, but this man who cut the
_Antinous_'s wires is of a different calibre altogether. He is AI, and
when I catch him, as I certainly shall, I will take off my hat to
him."

"You say that the _Antinous_ is all right now?" I observed.

"Yes. I saw her towed out of the repair basin an hour ago, and she
must be away down the river by this time. It is not of her that I'm
thinking, but of the other ships which are constantly in and out for
repairs. There are always a dozen here of various craft, usually small
stuff. While the man who cut those wires is unknown I shall be in a
perfect fever, and so will the Admiral-Superintendent. We'll get the
beauty sooner or later, but if it is later, there may be had mischief
done. If he can cut wires in one ship, he may do much worse things in
some other. The responsibility rests on me, and it is rather
crushing."

Dawson spoke with less than his usual cheery confidence. I fancy that
the thinness and whiteness of his face were not wholly due to
disguise. He had not been to bed since he had been called up in the
middle watch of the night before last, and the man was worn out.

"If you take my poor advice, Dawson," I said, "you will cut off now
and get some sleep. Even your brain cannot work continuously without
rest. The country needs you at your best, and needs you very badly
indeed."

His dull, weary eyes lighted as if under the stimulus of champagne,
and he turned upon me a look which was almost affectionate. I really
began to believe that Dawson likes me, that he sees in me a kindred
spirit as patriotically unscrupulous as himself.

He jumped up and gripped my hand. "You are right. I will put in a few
hours' sleep and then to work once more. This time I am up against a
man who is nearly as smart as I am myself, and I can't afford to carry
any handicap."

I led him to the door and put him out, and then turned to Cary with a
laugh. "And I, too, will follow Dawson's example. It is past one, and
my head is buzzing with queer ideas. Perhaps, after all, the Germans
have more imagination than we usually credit them with. I wonder--"
But I did not tell to Cary what I wondered.

       *       *       *       *       *

We were sitting after breakfast in Cary's study, enjoying the first
sweet pipe of the day, when the telephone bell rang. Cary took off the
earpiece and I listened to a one-sided conversation somewhat as
follows:--

"What! Is that you, Mr. Dawson? Yes, Copplestone is here. The
_Antigone_? What about her? She is a sister ship of the _Antinous_,
and was in with damage to her forefoot, which had been ripped up when
she ran down that big German submarine north of the Orkneys--Yes, I
know; she was due to go out some time to-day. What do you say? Wires
cut? Whose wires have been cut? The _Antigone's?_ Oh, the devil! Yes,
we will both come down to your office this afternoon. Whenever you
like."

Cary hung up the receiver and glared at me. "It has happened again,"
he groaned. "The _Antigone_ this time. She has been in dry dock for
the past fortnight and was floated out yesterday. Her full complement
joined her last night. Dawson says that he was called up at
eight-o'clock by the news that her gun-wires have been cut exactly
like those of the _Antinous_ and in the same incomprehensible way. He
seems, curiously enough, to be quite cheerful about it."

"He has had a few hours sleep. And, besides, he sees that this second
case, so exactly like the first, makes the solution of his problem
very much more easy. I am glad that he is cheerful, for I feel
exuberantly happy myself. I was kept awake half the night by a
persistent notion which seemed the more idiotic the more I thought all
round it. But now--now, there may be something in it."

"What is your idea? Tell me quick."

"No, thank you, Dr. Watson. We amateur masters of intuition don't work
our thrilling effects in that way. We keep our notions to ourselves
until they turn out to be right, and then we declare that we saw
through the problem from the first. When we have been wrong, we say
nothing. So you observe, Cary, that whatever happens our reputations
do not suffer."




CHAPTER VI


GUESSWORK

Cary tried to shake my resolution, but I was obdurately silent. While
he canvassed the whole position, bringing to bear his really profound
knowledge of naval equipment and routine--and incidentally helping me
greatly to realise the improbability of my own guesswork solution--I
was able to maintain an air of lofty superiority. I must have
aggravated him intensely, unpardonably, for I was his guest. He ought
to have kicked me out. Yet he bore with me like the sweet-blooded
kindly angel that he is, and when at the end it appeared that I was
right after all, Cary was the first to pour congratulations and honest
admiration upon me. If he reads this book he will know that I am
repentant--though I must confess that I should behave in just the same
abominable way if the incident were to occur again. There is no great
value in repentance such as this.

We reached Dawson's office in the early afternoon, and found his chief
assistant there, but no Dawson. "The old man," remarked that officer,
a typical, stolid, faithful detective sergeant, "is out on the
rampage. He ought by rights to sit here directing the staff and leave
the outside investigations to me. He is a high-up man, almost a deputy
assistant commissioner, and has no call to be always disguising
himself and playing his tricks on everybody. I suppose you know that
white-haired old gent down here ain't a bit like Bill Dawson, who's
not a day over forty?"

"I have given up wondering where the real Dawson ends and where the
disguises begin. The man I met up north wasn't the least bit like the
one down here."

"A deal younger, I expect," said the chief assistant, grinning. "He
shifts about between thirty and sixty. The old man is no end of a
cure, and tries to take us in the same as he does you. There's an
inspector at the Yard who was at school with him down Hampshire way,
and ought to know what he is really like, but even he has given Dawson
up. He says that the old man does not know his own self in the
looking-glass; and as for Mrs. Dawson, I expect she has to take any
one who comes along claiming to be her husband, for she can't,
possibly tell t'other from which."

"One might make a good story out of that," I observed to Cary.

"I don't understand," said he. "Mr. Dawson told me once that I knew
the real Dawson, but that few other people did."

"If he told you that," calmly observed the assistant, "you may bet
your last shirt he was humbugging you. He couldn't tell the truth, not
if he tried ever so."

"What is he at now?" I asked.

"I don't know, sir. And if he told me, I shouldn't believe him. I
don't take no account of a word that man says. But he's the most
successful detective we've got in the whole Force. He's sure to be
head of the C.I.D. one day, and then he will have to stay in his
office and give us others a chance."

"I don't believe he will," I observed, laughing. "There will be a sham
Dawson in the office and the genuine article will be out on the
rampage. He is a man who couldn't sit still, not even if you tied him
in his chair and sealed the knots."

We spent a pleasant hour pulling Dawson to pieces and leaving to him
not a rag of virtue, except intense professional zeal. We exchanged
experiences of him, those of the chief assistant being particularly
rich and highly flavoured. It appeared that Dawson when off duty loved
to occupy the platform at meetings of his religious connection and to
hold forth to the elect. The privilege of "sitting under him" had been
enjoyed more than once by the assistant, who retailed to us extracts
from Dawson's favourite sermon on "Truth." His views upon Truth were
unbending as armour plate. "Under no circumstances, not to save
oneself from imminent death, not to shield a wife or a child from the
penalties for a lapse from virtue, not even to preserve one's country
from the attacks of an enemy, was it permissible to a Peculiar Baptist
to diverge by the breadth of a hair from the straight path of Truth.
Hell yawned on either hand; only along the knife edge of Truth could
salvation be reached."

"He made me shiver," said the chief assistant, "and he drove me to
thinking of one or two little deceptions of my own. When Dawson
preaches, his eyes blaze, his voice breaks, and he will fall on his
knees and pray for the souls of those who heed not his words. You
can't look at him then and not believe that he means every word he
says. Yet it's all humbug."

"No, it is not," said I. "Dawson in the pulpit, or on the tub--or
whatever platform he uses--is absolutely genuine. He is the finest
example that I have ever met of the dual personality. He is in dead
earnest when he preaches on Truth, and he is in just as dead earnest
when, stripped of every moral scruple, he pursues a spy or a criminal.
In pursuit he is ruthless as a Prussian, but towards the captured
victim he can be strangely tender. I should not be surprised to learn
that he hates capital punishment and is a strong advocate of gentle
methods in prison discipline."

The chief assistant stared, opened a drawer, and pulled forth a slim
grey pamphlet. It was marked "For Office Use Only," and was entitled,
"Some Notes on Prison Reform," by Chief Inspector William Dawson.

I had begun to read the pamphlet, when a step sounded outside; the
assistant snatched it from my hand, flashed it back into its place,
and jumped to attention as Dawson entered. He surveyed us with those
searching, unwinking eyes of his--for we had the air of
conspirators--and said brusquely: "Clear out, Wilson. You talk too
much. And don't admit any one except Petty Officer Trehayne."

"The _Antigone_!" cried Cary, who thought only of ships. "The
_Antigone_! Is she much damaged?"

"No. Whoever tried to cut her wires was disturbed, or in too great a
hurry to do his work well. The main gun-cable was nipped, but not cut
through. She will be delayed till to-morrow, not longer. I am not
worrying about the _Antigone_, but about the new battleship
_Malplaquet_, which was commissioned last month, is nearly filled up
with stores, and is expected to leave the river on Saturday. We can't
have her delayed by any hanky tricks, not even if we have to put the
whole detective force on board of her. Still, I'm not so anxious as I
was. This _Antigone_ business has cleared things up a lot, and one can
sift out the impossible from the possible. To begin with, the
_Antinous_ was in for repairs to her geared turbines, and the
_Antigone_ for damage to her forefoot. Engineers were on one job, and
platers and riveters on the other. Different trades. So not a workman
who was in the _Antinous_ was also in the _Antigone_. We can rule out
all the workmen. We can also rule out my lieutenant R.N.R. with the
German name who has gone to sea in the _Antinous_. The care and
maintenance party in the _Antigone_ was not the same as the one in the
_Antinous_, not a man the same."

"You are sure of that?" cried I, for it seemed that my daring theory
had gone to wreck. "You are quite sure."

"Quite. I have all the names and have examined all the men. They were
all off the ship by eleven o'clock last night. I hadn't one of my own
men among them, but, to make sure, I sent Petty Officer Trehayne on
board at eight o'clock to keep a sharp look-out and to see all the
harbour party off the vessel. He reported a little after eleven that
they were all gone and the ship taken over by her own crew. The damage
was discovered at four bells in the morning watch."

"Six o'clock a.m.," interpreted Cary.

"It looks now as if there might be a traitor among her own crew, which
is her officers' job, not mine. I wash my hands of the _Antigone_, but
it is very much up to me to see that nothing hurtful happens to the
_Malplaquet_. The Admiral has orders to support me with all the force
under his command; the General of the District has the same orders.
But it isn't force we want so much as brains--Dawson's brains. I have
been beaten twice, but not the third time. I've told the Yard that if
the _Malplaquet_ is touched I shall resign, and if they send any one
to help me I shall resign. Between to-day, Thursday, and Saturday I am
going to catch the wily josser who has a fancy for cutting gun cables
or Dawson will say good-bye to the Force. That's a fair stake."

The man swelled with determination and pride. He had no thought of
failure, and drew inspiration and joy from the heaviness of the bet
which he had made with Fortune. He took the born gambler's delight in
a big risk.

"Then you think that the _Antinous_ and the _Antigone_ were both
damaged by the same man, and that he may have designs upon the
_Malplaquet_?" said I.

"I don't propose to tell you what I think," replied Dawson stiffly.

"Still," I persisted, passing over the snub, "you have a theory?"

"No, thanks," said Dawson contemptuously. "I have no use for theories.
When they are wrong they mislead you, and when they are right they are
no help. I believe in facts--facts brought out by constant vigilance.
Unsleeping watchfulness and universal suspicion, those are the
principles I work on. The theory business makes pretty story books,
but the Force does not waste good time over them."

"What are you going to do?"

"This is Thursday afternoon. I am going to join the _Malplaquet_
presently, and I'm not going to sleep till she is safely down the
river. I'm going to be my own watchman this time."

"How? In what capacity?"

Dawson gave a shrug of impatience, for his nerves were on edge. For a
moment he hesitated, and then, recollecting the high post to which I
had tacitly been appointed in his household, he replied:

"I am going as one of the Marine sentries."

"It's no use, Dawson," protested I emphatically. "You are a wonder at
disguise, and will look, I do not doubt, the very spit of a Marine.
But you can't pass among the men for half an hour without discovery.
They are a class apart, they talk their own language, cherish their
own secret traditions, live in a world to which no stranger ever
penetrates. You could pass as a naval officer more easily than you
could as a Pongo. It is sheer madness, Dawson."

He gave a short laugh. "Much you know about it. I have served in the
Red Corps myself. I was a recruit at Deal, passed two years at
Plymouth, and served afloat for three years. I was then drafted into
the Naval Police. Afterwards I was recommended for detective work in
the dockyards, and at the end of my Marine service joined the Yard. My
good man, I was a sergeant before I left the Corps."

"I give up, Dawson," said I. "Nothing about you will ever surprise me
again. Not even if you claim to have been a Cabinet Minister."

A queer smile stole over his face. "No, I have not been a minister,
but I have attended a meeting of the Cabinet."

Cary interposed at this point. "Yours is a fine idea, Mr. Dawson. As a
Marine sentry you can get yourself posted by the Major wherever you
please, and the Guard will not talk even though they may wonder that
any man should want to do twenty-four hours of duty per day. The
Marines are the closest, faith-fullest, and best disciplined force in
the wide world. Bluejackets will gossip; Marines never. You will be
able to watch more closely than even Trehayne, who, I suppose, will
also be on board."

"Yes. He is coming up soon for instructions. It's his last chance, as
it is mine. He sees that he must be held responsible for the wire
cutting in the _Antinous_, and to some slight extent also in the
_Antigone_, and that if anything goes wrong with the _Malplaquet_ he
will be dismissed. I shall be sorry to lose him, for he is an
exceptionally good man, but we can't allow failures in petty officer
detectives any more than we can in chief inspectors."

"Where does Trehayne come from? His name sounds Cornish," I asked.

"Falmouth, I believe. He is quite young, but he has had nearly three
years in the _Vernon_ at Portsmouth and in the torpedo factory at
Greenock. A first-class engineer and electrician and a sound
detective. He has been with me for some twelve months. You will see
him if he calls soon."

I had been thinking hard over the details of Dawson's plans while the
talk went on, and then ventured to offer some comments.

"It is fortunate that you have grown a moustache since you were in the
north; you could not have been a Marine as a clean-shaven man."

"I often have to shave it," said Dawson, "but I always grow it again
between whiles. One can take it off quicker than one can put it on
again. False hair is the devil; I have never used it yet and never
will. So whenever I have a spell of leisure I grow a moustache against
emergencies--like this one."

My next comment was rather difficult to make, for I did not wish
either Cary or Dawson to divine its purpose. "If I may make a
suggestion to a man of your experience it would be that none of your
men here, not even your chief assistant or Trehayne, should know that
you are joining the _Malplaquet_ as a Marine. Two independent strings
are in this case better than a double-jointed string."

"I never tell anything to any one, least of all to Pudden-Headed
Wilson. He is loyal, but a stupid ass with a flapping tongue. Trehayne
is close as wax, but, on general principles, I keep my movements
strictly to myself. He will be in the ship, but he won't know that I
am there too. The Commander must know and the Major of Marines, for I
shall want a uniform and the free run of the ship, so as to be posted
where I like. The Marine Sergeants of the Guard may guess, but, as Mr.
Cary says, they won't talk. You two gentlemen are safe," added Dawson
pleasantly, "for I've got you tight in my hand and could lock either
of you up in a minute if I chose."

A peculiar knock came upon the door, a word passed between Dawson and
the police sentry outside, and a young man in the uniform of a naval
petty officer entered the room. He was clean-shaven, looked about
twenty-five years old, was dark and slim of the Latin type which is
not uncommon in Cornwall, and impressed me at once with his air of
intelligence and refinement. His voice, too, was rather striking. It
was that of the wardroom rather than of the mess deck. I liked the
look of Petty Officer Trehayne. Dawson presented him to us and then
took him aside for instructions. When he had finished, both men
rejoined us, and the conversation became light and general. Trehayne,
though clearly suffering from nervous strain after his recent
professional failures, talked with the ease and detachment of a highly
cultivated man. It appeared that he had been educated at Blundell's
School, had lost his parents at about sixteen, had done a course in
some electrical engineering shops at Plymouth, and when twenty years
old had secured a good berth on the engineering staff of the _Vernon_.
He could speak both French and German, which he had learned partly at
school and partly on the Continent during leave. Dawson, who was
evidently very proud of his young pupil and assistant, paraded his
accomplishments before us rather to Trehayne's embarrassment. "Try him
with French and German," urged Dawson. "He can chatter them as well as
English. But he is as close as wax in all three languages. Some men
can't keep their tongues still in one."

I turned to Trehayne and spoke in French: "German I can't abide, but
French I love. My vocabulary is extensive, but my accent
abominable--incurably British. You can hear it for yourself how it
gives me away."

"It is not quite of Paris," replied Trehayne. "Mais vous parlez
français très bien, très correctement. Beaucoup mieux que moi."

"Non, non, monsieur," I protested, and then reverted to English.

"Now," said Dawson, when Trehayne had left us, "I must get along, see
the Commander of the _Malplaquet_, and draw a uniform and rifle out of
the marine stores. It will be quite like old times. You won't see me
until Saturday, when I shall be either a triumphant or a broken man.
What is the betting, Mr. Copplestone?"

I could not understand the quizzical little smile that Dawson gave me,
nor the humorous twitch of his lips. He had contemptuously disclaimed
all use of theories, yet there was more moving behind that big
forehead of his than he chose to give away. Did his ideas run on
parallel lines with mine; did he even suspect that I had formed any
idea at all? I could not inquire, for I dislike being laughed at,
especially by this man Dawson. I had nothing to go upon, at least so
little that was palpable that anything which I might say would be
dismissed as the merest guesswork, for which, as Dawson proclaimed, he
had no use. Yet, yet--my original guess stuck firmly in my mind,
improbable though it might be, and had just been nailed down
tightly--I scorn to mystify the reader--by a few simple sentences
spoken in French.




CHAPTER VII


THE MARINE SENTRY

We had a whole day to fill in before we could get any news of Dawson's
vigil in the _Malplaquet_, and I have never known a day as drearily
long. Cary and I were both restless as peas on a hot girdle, and could
not settle down to talk or to read or to write. Cary sought vainly to
persuade me to read and pass judgment upon his Navy Book. In spite of
my interest in the subject my soul revolted at the forbidding pile of
manuscript. I promised to read the proofs and criticise them with
severity, but as for the M.S.--no, thanks. Poor Cary needed all his
sweet patience to put up with me. By eleven o'clock we had become
unendurable to one another, and I gladly welcomed his suggestion to
adjourn to his club, have lunch there, and try to inveigle the
Commander of the _Malplaquet_ into our net. "I know him," said Cary.
"He is a fine fellow; and though he must be pretty busy, he will be
glad to lunch somewhere away from the ship. If we have luck we will go
back with him and look over the _Malplaquet_ ourselves."

"If you can manage that, Cary, you will have my blessing."

He did manage to work the luncheon part by telephoning to the yard
where the _Malplaquet_ was fitting out, and we left the rest to our
personal charms.

Cary was right. The Commander was a very fine fellow, an English naval
officer of the best type. He confirmed the views I had frequently
heard expressed by others of his profession that no hatred exists
between English and German sailors. They leave that to middle-aged
civilians who write for newspapers. The German Navy, in his opinion,
was "a jolly fine Service," worthy in high courage and skill to
contest with us the supremacy of the seas. He had been through the
China troubles as a lieutenant in the _Monmouth_--afterwards sunk by
German shot off Coronel--knew von Spee, von Müller, and other officers
of the Pacific Squadron, and spoke of them with enthusiasm. "They sunk
some of our ships and we wiped out theirs. That was all in the way of
business. We loved them in peace and we loved them in war. They were
splendidly loyal to us out in China--von Spee actually transferred
some of his ships to the command of our own senior officer so as to
avoid any clash of control--and when it came to fighting, they fought
like gentlemen. I grant you that their submarine work against merchant
ships has been pretty putrid, but I don't believe that was the choice
of their Navy. They got their orders from rotten civilians like Kaiser
Bill." Imagine if you can the bristling moustache of the Supreme War
Lord could he have heard himself described as a civilian!

Our guest had commanded a destroyer in the Jutland battle, and assured
us that the handling of the German battle squadrons had been masterly.
"They punished us heavily for just so long as they were superior in
strength, and then they slipped away before Jellicoe could get his
blow in. They kept fending us off with torpedo attacks until the night
came down, and then clean vanished. We got in some return smacks after
dark at stragglers, but it was very difficult to say how much damage
we did. Not much, I expect. Still it was a good battle, as decisive in
its way as Trafalgar. It proved that the whole German Fleet could not
fight out an action against our full force and have the smallest hope
of success. I am just praying for the chance of a whack at them in the
_Malplaquet_. My destroyer was a bonny ship, the best in the flotilla,
but the _Malplaquet_ is a real peach. You should see her."

"We mean to," said Cary. "This very afternoon. You shall take us back
with you."

The Commander opened his eyes at this cool proposal, but we prevailed
upon him to seek the permission of the Admiral-Superintendent, who, a
good deal to my surprise, proved to be quite pliable. Cary's
reputation for discretion must be very high in the little village
where he lives if it is able to guarantee so disreputable a scribbler
as Bennet Copplestone! The Admiral, fortunately, had not read any of
my Works before they had been censored. When printed in _Cornhill_
they were comparatively harmless.

I must not describe the _Malplaquet_. Her design was not new to me--I
had seen more than one of her type--but as she is now a unit in
Beatty's Fleet her existence is not admitted to the world. As we went
up and down her many steep narrow ladders, and peered into dark
corners, I looked everywhere for a Marine sentry whom I could identify
by mark of ear as Dawson. I never saw him, but Trehayne passed me
twice, and I found myself again admiring his splendid young manhood.
He was not big, being rather slim and wiry than strongly built, but in
sheer beauty of face and form he was almost perfectly fashioned. "Do
you know that man?" I asked of our commander, indicating Trehayne.
"No," said he. "He is one of the shore party. But I should like to
have him with me. He is one of the smartest looking petty officers
that I have ever seen."

We were shown everything that we desired to see except the
transmission room and the upper conning tower--the twin holy of holies
in a commissioned ship--and slipped away, escaping the Captain by a
bare two minutes. Which was lucky, as he would probably have had us
thrown into the "ditch."

The end of the day was as weariful as the beginning, and we were all
glad--especially, I expect, Mrs. Cary--to go early to bed. That
ill-used lady, to whom we could disclose nothing of our anxieties,
must have found us wretched company.

We had finished breakfast the next morning--the Saturday of Dawson's
gamble--and were sitting on Cary's big fireguard talking of every
subject, except the one which had kept us awake at night, when a
servant entered and announced that a soldier was at the door with a
message from Mr. Dawson. "Show him in," almost shouted Cary, and I
jumped to my feet, stirred for once into a visible display of
eagerness.

A Marine came in, dressed in the smart blue sea kit that I love; upon
his head the low flat cap of his Corps. He gave us a full swinging
salute, and jumped to attention with a click of his heels. He looked
about thirty-five, and wore a neatly trimmed dark moustache. His hair,
also very dark, was cropped close to his head. Standing there with his
hands upon the red seams of his trousers, his chest well filled out,
and his face weather tanned, he looked a proper figure of a sea-going
soldier. "Mr. Cary, sir," he said, in a flat, monotonous orderly's
voice, "Major Boyle's compliments, and could you and your friend come
down to the Police Station to meet him and Chief Inspector Dawson. I
have a taxi-cab at the door, sir."

"Certainly," cried Cary; "in two minutes we shall be ready."

"Oh, no, we shan't," I remarked calmly, for I had moved to a position
of tactical advantage on the Marine's port beam. "We will have the
story here, if you don't mind, Dawson."

He stamped pettishly on the floor, whipped off his cap, and spun it
across the room. "Confound you, Mr. Copplestone!" he growled. "How
the--how the--do you do it?" He could not think of an expletive mild
enough for Mrs. Cary's ears. "There's something about me that I can't
hide. What is it? If you don't tell, I will get you on the Regulation
compelling all British subjects to answer questions addressed to them
by a competent naval or military authority."

"You don't happen to be either, Dawson," said I unkindly. "And,
beside, there was never yet a law made which could compel a man to
speak or a woman to hold her tongue. Some day perhaps, if you are
good, I will show you how the trick is done. But not yet. I want to
have something to bargain with when you cast me into jail. Out with
the story; we are impatient. If I mistake not, you come to us Dawson
triumphant. You haven't the air of a broken man."

"I have been successful," he answered gravely, "but I am a long, long
way from feeling triumphant. No, thank you, Mrs. Cary, I have had my
breakfast, but if I might trouble you for a cup of coffee? Many
thanks."

Dawson sat down, and Cary moved about inspecting him from every angle.
"No," declared he at last, "I cannot see the smallest resemblance, not
the smallest. You were thin; now you are distinctly plump. Your hair
was nearly white. Your cheeks had fallen in as if your back teeth were
missing. Your lower lip stuck out." Dawson smiled, highly gratified.
"I took in all my people at the office this morning," he said. "They
all thought, and think still, that I was a messenger from the
_Malplaquet_, which, by the way, is well down the river safe and
sound. Just wait a minute." He walked into a corner of the room, moved
his hands quickly between his side pockets and his face, and then
returned. Except for the dark hair and moustache and the brown skin,
he had become the Dawson of the Thursday afternoon. "It is as simple
for me to change," said the artist, with a nasty look in my direction,
"as it seems to be for Mr. Copplestone here to spot me. It will take a
day or two to get the dye out of my hair and the tan off my skin. I am
going to have a sharp touch of influenza, which is a useful disease
when one wants to lie in. Since Sunday I have only been twice to bed."

We filled him up with coffee and flattery--as one fills a motor car
with petrol and oil--but asked him no questions until we were safely
in Cary's study and Mrs. Cary had gone about her household duties.
"Your good lady," remarked Dawson to Cary, "is as little curious as
any woman I have met, and we will leave her at that if you don't mind.
The best thing about our women is that they don't care tuppence about
naval and military details. If they did, and once started prying with
that keen scent and indomitable persistence of theirs, we might as
well chuck up. Even my own bright team of charmers never know and
never ask the meaning of the information that they ferret out for me.
Their curiosity is all personal--about men and women, never about
things. Women--"

I cut Dawson short. He tended to become tedious.

"Quite so," I observed politely. "And to revert to one big female
creature, let us hear something of the _Malplaquet_."

"You at any rate are curious enough for a dozen. It would serve you
right to keep you hopping a bit longer. But I have a kindly eye for
human weakness, though you might not think it. I joined the ship on
Thursday afternoon, slipping in as one of a detachment of fifty
R.M.L.I. who had been wired for from Chatham. They were an emergency
lot; we hadn't enough in the ship for the double sentry go that I
wanted. All my plans were made with the Commander and Major Boyle, and
they both did exactly what I told them. It isn't often that a private
of Marines has the ordering about of two officers. But Dawson is
Dawson; no common man. They did as I told them, and were glad to do
it. I had extra light bulbs put on all over the lower decks and every
dark corner lit up--except one. Just one. And this one was where the
four gun-cables ran out of the switch-room and lay alongside one
another before they branched off to the fore and after turrets and to
the port and starboard side batteries. That was the most likely spot
which any one wanting to cut the gun-wires would mark down, and I
meant to watch it pretty closely myself. We had double sentries at the
magazines. The _Malplaquet_ is an oil-fired ship, so we hadn't any
bothering coal bunkers to attract fancy bombs. I was pretty sure that
after the _Antinous_ and the _Antigone_ we had mostly wire-cutting to
fear. When a man has done one job successfully, and repeated it almost
successfully, he is pretty certain to have a third shot. Besides, if
one is out to delay a ship, cutting wires is as good a way as any. I
had an idea that my man was not a bomber."

"I thought that you scorned theories," I put in dryly. "When they are
wrong they mislead you, and when they are right they are no help."

Dawson frowned. "Shut up, Copplestone," snapped Cary.

"We were in no danger from the lighting, heating, and telephone wires,
for any defect would have been visible at once. It was the gun and
gunnery control cables that were the weak spots. So I had L.T.O.'s
posted in the spotting top, the conning tower, the transmission room,
the four turrets, and at the side batteries. Every few minutes they
put through tests which would have shown up at once any wires that had
been tampered with. After the shore party had cleared out about nine
o'clock on the Thursday, no officer or man was allowed to leave the
ship without a special permit from the Commander. This was all dead
against the sanitary regulations of the harbour, but I had the
Admiral's authority to break any rules I pleased. By the way, you two
ought never to have been allowed on board yesterday afternoon--I saw
you, though you didn't see me; it was contrary to my orders. I spoke
to the Admiral pretty sharp last night. 'Who is responsible for the
ship?' says I. 'You or me?' 'You,' says he. 'I leave it at that,' says
I."

"One moment, Dawson," I put in. "If the shore party had all gone, how
was it that I saw Petty Officer Trehayne in the ship?"

"He had orders to stay and keep watch--though he didn't know I was on
board myself. Two pairs of police eyes are better than one pair, and
fifty times better than all the Navy eyes in the ship. Of all the
simple-minded, unsuspicious beggars in the world, give me a pack of
naval ratings! I wouldn't have one of them for sentries--that is why
the fifty emergency Marines were sent for." Dawson's limitless pride
in his old Service, and deep contempt for the mere sailor, had come
back in full flood with the uniform of his Corps.

"I started my own sentry duty in the dark corner I told you of as soon
as I had seen to the arrangements all over the _Malplaquet_, and I was
there, with very few breaks of not more than five minutes each for a
bite of food, for twenty-six hours. Two Marine sentries took my place
whenever I was away. I had my rifle and bayonet, and stood back in a
corner of a bulkhead where I couldn't be seen. The hours were awful
long; I stood without hardly moving. All the pins and needles out of
Redditch seemed to dance up and down me, but I stuck it out--and I had
my reward, I had my reward. I did my duty, but it's a sick and sorry
man that I am this day."

"There was nothing else to be done," I said. "What you feel now is a
nervous reaction."

"That's about it. I watched and watched, never feeling a bit like
sleep though my eyes burned something cruel and my feet--they were
lumps of prickly wood, not feet. Dull lumps with every now and then a
stab as if a tin tack had been driven into them. Beyond me in the open
alley-way the light was strong, and I could see men pass frequently,
but no one came into my corner till the end, and no one saw me. I
heard six bells go in the first watch ('Eleven p.m.,' whispered Cary)
on Friday evening, though there was a good bit of noise of getting
ready to go out in the early morning, and I was beginning to think
that all my trouble might go for naught, when a man in a Navy cap and
overalls stopped just opposite my dark hole between two bulkheads. His
face was turned from me, as he looked carefully up and down the
lighted way. He stood there quite still for some seconds, and then
stepped backwards towards me. I could see him plain against the light
beyond. He listened for another minute or so, and, satisfied that no
one was near, spun on his heels, whipped a tool from his dungaree
overalls, and reached up to the wires which ran under the deck beams
overhead. In spite of my aching joints and sore feet I was out in a
flash and had my bayonet up against his chest. He didn't move till my
point was through his clothes and into his flesh. I just shoved till
he gave ground, and so, step by step, I pushed him with the point of
my bayonet till he was under the lights. His arms had come down, he
dropped the big shears with insulated handles which he had drawn from
his pocket, but he didn't speak a word to me and I did not speak to
him. I just held him there under the lights, and we looked at one
another without a word spoken. There was no sign of surprise or fear
in his face, just a queer little smile. Suddenly he moved, made a
snatch at the front of his overalls, and put something into his mouth.
I guessed what it was, but did not try to stop him; it was the best
thing that he could do."

Dawson stopped and pulled savagely at his cigar. He jabbed the end
with his knife, though the cigar was drawing perfectly well, and gave
forth a deep growl which might have been a curse or a sob.

"Have you ever watched an electric bulb fade away when the current is
failing?" he asked. "The film pales down from glowing white to dull
red, which gets fainter and fainter, little by little, till nothing
but the memory of it lingers on your retina. His eyes went out exactly
like that bulb. They faded and faded out of his face, which still kept
up that queer, twisted smile. I've seen them ever since; wherever I
turn. I shall be glad of that bout of influenza, and shall begin it
with a stiff dose of veronal.... When the light had nearly gone out of
his eyes and he was rocking on his feet, I spoke for the first time. I
spoke loud too. 'Good-bye,' I called out; 'I'm Dawson.' He heard me,
for his eyes answered with a last flash; then they faded right out and
he fell flat on the steel deck. He had died on his feet; his will kept
him upright to the end; that was a Man. He lived a Man's life, doing
what he thought his duty, and he died a Man's death.... I blew my
whistle twice; up clattered a Sergeant with the Marine Guard and
stopped where that figure on the deck barred their way. 'Get a
stretcher,' I said, 'and send for the doctor. But it won't be any use.
The man's dead.' The Sergeant asked sharply for my report, and sent
off a couple of men for a stretcher. 'Excuse me, Sergeant,' I said, in
my best detective officer voice, 'I will report direct to your Major
and the Commander. I am Chief Inspector Dawson.' He showed no surprise
nor doubt of my word--if you want to understand discipline, gentlemen,
get the Marines to teach you--he asked no questions. With one word he
called the guard to attention, and himself saluted me--me a private! I
handed him my rifle--there was an inch of blood at the point of the
bayonet--and hobbled off to the nearest ladder. My word, I could
scarcely walk, and as for climbing a ship's ladder--I could never have
done if some one hadn't given me a boost behind and some one else a
hand at the top. The Commander and the Major of Marines were both in
the wardroom; I walked in, saluted them as a self-respecting private
should do, and told them the whole story."

"It was Petty Officer Trehayne," said I calmly--and waited for a
sensation.

"Of course," replied Dawson, greatly to my annoyance. He might have
shown some astonishment at my wonderful intuition; but he didn't, not
a scrap. Even Cary was at first disappointing, though he warmed up
later, and did me full justice. "Trehayne a spy!" cried Cary. "He
looked a smart good man."

"I am not saying that he wasn't," snapped Dawson, whose nerves were
very badly on edge. "He was obeying the orders of his superiors as we
all have to do. He gave his life, and it was for his country's
service. Nobody can do more than that. Don't you go for to slander
Trehayne. I watched him die--on his feet."

Cary turned to me. "What made you think it was Trehayne?" he asked.
This was better. I looked at Dawson, who was brooding in his chair
with his thoughts far away. He was still seeing those eyes fading out
under the glare of the electrics between the steel decks of the
_Malplaquet_!

"It was a sheer guess at first," said I, preserving a decent show of
modesty. "When I heard how the enemy plotted and Dawson
counter-plotted with all those skilled workmen in his detective
service, it occurred to me that an enemy with imagination might
counter-counterplot by getting men inside Dawson's defences. I
couldn't see how one would work it, but if German agents, say, could
manage to become trusted servants of Dawson himself, they would have
the time of their lives. So far I was guessing at a possibility,
however improbable it might seem. Then when Dawson told us that he had
sent Trehayne into the _Antigone_ and that he was the one factor
common to both vessels--the workmen and the maintenance part were all
different--I began to feel that my wild theory might have something in
it. I didn't say anything to you, Cary, or to Dawson--he despises
theories. Afterwards Trehayne came in and I spoke to him, and he to
me, in French. He did not utter a dozen words altogether, but I was
absolutely certain that his French had not been learned at an English
public school and during short trips on the Continent. I know too much
of English school French and of one's opportunities to learn upon
Continental trips. It took me three years of hard work to recover from
the sort of French which I learned at school, and I am not well yet.
The French spoken by Trehayne was the French of the nursery. It was
almost, if not quite, his mother tongue, just as his English was.
Trehayne's French accent did not fit into Trehayne's history as
retailed to us by Dawson. From that moment I plumped for Trehayne as
the cutter of gun wires."

Dawson had been listening, though he showed no interest in my speech.
When I had quite finished, and was basking in the respectful
admiration emanating from dear old Cary, he upset over me a bucket of
very cold water.

"Very pretty," said he. "But answer one question. Why did I send
Trehayne to the _Antigone_?"

"Why? How can I tell? You said it was to make sure that the shore
party were all off the ship."

"I said! What does it matter what I say! What I do matters a heap, but
what I say--pouf! I sent Trehayne to the _Antigone_ to test him. I
sent him expecting that he would try to cut her wires, and he did.
Then when I was sure, though I had no evidence for a law court, I sent
him to the _Malplaquet_, and I set my trap there for him to walk into.
How did I guess? I don't guess; I watch. The more valuable a man is to
me, the more I watch him, for he might be even more valuable to
somebody else. Trehayne was an excellent man, but he had not been with
me a month before I was watching him as closely as any cat. I hadn't
been a Marine and served ashore and afloat without knowing a born
gentleman when I see one, and knowing, too, the naval stamp. Trehayne
was too much of a gentleman to have become a workman in the _Vernon_
and at Greenock without some very good reason. He said that he was an
orphan--yes; he said his parents left him penniless, and he had to
earn his living the best way he could--yes. Quite good reasons, but
they didn't convince me. I was certain sure that somewhere, some time,
Trehayne had been a naval officer. I had seen too many during my
service to make any mistake about that. So when I stood there waiting
in that damned cold corner behind that bulkhead, it was for Trehayne
that I was waiting. I meant to take him or to kill him. When he killed
himself, I was glad. As I watched his eyes fade out, it was as if my
own son was dying on his feet in front of me. But it was better so
than to die in front of a firing party. For I--I loved him, and I
wished him 'Good-bye,'"

Dawson pitched his cigar into the fire, got up, and walked away to the
far side of the room. I had never till that moment completely
reverenced the penetrative, infallible judgment of Little Jane.

Dawson came back after a few minutes, picked up another cigar from
Cary's box, and sat down. "You see, I have a letter from him. I found
it in his quarters where I went straight from the _Malplaquet_."

"May we read it?" I asked gently. "I was greatly taken with Trehayne
myself. He was a clean, beautiful boy. He was an enemy officer on
Secret Service; there is no dishonour in that. If he were alive, I
could shake his hand as the officer of the firing party shook the hand
of Lody before he gave the last order."

Dawson took a paper from his pocket, and handed it to me. "Read it
out," said he; "I can't."




CHAPTER VIII


TREHAYNE'S LETTER

I took the letter from Dawson and glanced through it. The first sheet
and the last had been written very recently--just before the boy had
left his quarters for the last time to go on board the _Malplaquet_;
the remainder had been set down at various times; and the whole had
been connected up, put together, and paged after the completion of the
last sheet. Trehayne wrote a pretty hand, firm and clear, the writing
of an artist who was also a trained engineer. There was no trace in
the script of nervousness or of hesitation. He had carried out his
Orders, he saw clearly that the path which he had trod was leading him
to the end of his journey, but he made no complaint. He was a Latin,
and to the last possessed that loftiness of spirit wedded to sombre
fatalism which is the heritage of the Latins. He was at war with his
kindred of Italy and France, and with the English among whom he had
been brought up, and whom he loved. He was their enemy by accident of
birth, but though he might and did love his foes better than his
German friends of Austria and Prussia, yet he had taken the oath of
faithful service, and kept it to the end. I could understand why
Dawson--that strange human bloodhound, in whom the ruthless will
continually struggled with and kept under the very tender heart--would
allow no one to slander Trehayne.

Cary was watching me eagerly, waiting for me to read the letter.

Dawson's head was resting on one hand, and his face was turned away,
so that I could not see it. He could not wholly conceal his emotion,
but he would not let us see more of it than he could help. He did not
move once during my reading.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Chief Inspector William Dawson, C.I.D._

SIR,

Will you be surprised, my friend, when you read this that I have left
for you, to learn that I, your right-hand man in the unending spy
hunt, I whom you have called your bright jewel of a pupil, Petty
Officer John Trehayne, R.N.V.R., am at this moment upon the books of
the Austrian Navy as a sub-lieutenant, seconded for Secret Service?
Have you ever been surprised by anything? I don't know. You have said
often in my hearing that you suspect every one. Have you suspected me?
Sometimes when I have caught that sidelong squint of yours, that
studied accidental glance which sees so much, I have felt almost sure
that you were far from satisfied that Trehayne was the man he gave
himself out to be. I have been useful to you. I have eaten your salt,
and have served you as faithfully as was consistent with the supreme
Orders by which I direct my action. With you I have run down and
captured German agents, wretched lumps of dirt, whom I loathe as much
as you do. Those who have sworn fidelity to this fair country of
England, and have accepted of her citizenship--things which I have
never done--and then in fancied security have spied upon their adopted
Mother, I loathe and spit upon. I have taken the police oath of
obedience to my superiors, and I have kept it, but I have never sworn
allegiance to His Majesty your King, whom I pray that God may preserve
though I am his enemy. To your blunt English mind, untrained in logic,
my sentiments and actions may lack consistency. But no. Those agents
whom we have run down, you and I, were traitors--traitors to England.
Of all traitors for whom Hell is hungry the German-born traitor is the
most devilish. I would not have you think, my friend, that I am at one
with them. Never while I have been in your pay and service have I had
any communication direct or indirect with any of the naturalised-
British Prussian scum, who have betrayed your noble generosity. I have
taken my Orders from Vienna, I have communicated always direct with
Vienna. I am an Austrian naval officer. I am no traitor to England.

       *       *       *       *       *

I spring from an old Italian family which has long been settled in
Trieste. For many generations we have served in the Austrian Navy.
With modern Italy, with the Italy above all which has thrown the Holy
Father into captivity and stripped the Holy See of the dominions
bestowed upon it by God, we have no part or lot. Yet when I have met
Italian officers, and those too of France, as I have frequently done
during my cruises afloat, I have felt with them a harmony of spirit
which I have never experienced in association with German-Austrians
and with Prussians. I do not wish to speak evil of our Allies, the
Prussians, but to one of my blood they are the most detestable people
whom God ever had the ill-judgment to create.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was born in Trieste, and lived there with my parents until I was
eight years old. In our private life we always spoke Italian or
French, German was our official language. I know that language well,
of course, but it is not my mother tongue. Italian or French, and
afterwards English--I speak and write all three equally well; which of
the three I shall use when I come to die and one reverts to the speech
of the nursery and schoolroom, I cannot say; it will depend upon whom
those are that stand about my deathbed.

When I was eight years old, my father, Captain ---- (no, I will not
tell you my name; it is not Trehayne though somewhat similar in
sound), was appointed Austrian Consul at Plymouth, and we all moved to
that great Devonshire seaport. I was young enough to absorb the rich
English atmosphere, nowhere so rich as in that county which is the
home and breeding-ground of your most splendid Navy. I was born again,
a young Elizabethan Englishman. My story to you of my origin was true
in one particular--I really was educated at Blundell's School at
Tiverton. Whenever--and it has happened more than once--I have met as
Trehayne old schoolfellows of Blundell's they have accepted without
comment or inquiry my tale that I had become an Englishman, and had
anglicised my name. Among the peoples which exist on earth to-day, you
English are the most nobly generous and unsuspicious. The Prussians
laugh at you; I, an Austrian-Italian, love and respect you.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I was sixteen, after I had spent eight years in Devon, and four
of those years at an English public school, I was in speech and almost
in the inner fibres of my mind an Englishman. Your naval authorities
at Plymouth and Devonport, as serenely trustful and heedless of
espionage as the mass of your kindly people, allowed my father--whom I
often accompanied--to see the dockyards, the engine shops, the
training schools, and the barracks. They knew that he was an Austrian
naval officer, and they took him to their hearts as a brother, of the
common universal brotherhood of the sea. I think that your Navy holds
those of a foreign naval service as more nearly of kin to themselves
than civilians of their own blood. The bond of a common profession is
more close than the bond of a common nationality. I do not doubt that
my father sent much information to our Embassy in London--it was what
he was employed to do--but I am sure that he did not basely betray the
wonderful confidence of his hosts. Our countries were at peace. My
father is no Prussian; he is a chivalrous gentleman. I am sure that he
did not send more than his English naval friends were content at the
time that he should send. For in those years your newspapers and your
books upon the Royal Navy of England concealed little from the world.
I have visited Dartmouth; I have dined in the Naval College there with
bright sailor boys of my own age. It was then my one dream, had I
remained in England, to have become an Englishman, and to have myself
served in your Navy. It was a vain dream, but I knew no better. Fate
and my birth made me afterwards your enemy. I would have fought you
gladly face to face on land or sea, but never, never, would I have
stabbed the meanest of Englishmen in the back.

When I was sixteen years old I left England with my parents and
returned to Triest. I was a good mathematician with a keen taste for
mechanics. I spent two years in the naval engineering shops at Pola,
and I was gazetted as a sub-lieutenant in the engineering branch of
the Austrian Navy. My next two years were spent afloat. Although I did
not know it, I had already been marked out by my superiors for the
Secret Service. My perfect acquaintance with English, my education at
Blundell's, my knowledge of your thoughts and your queer ways, and
twists of mind, had equipped me conspicuously for Secret Service work
in your midst.

As a youth of twenty, in the first flush of manhood, I was seconded
for service here, and I returned to England. That was five years ago.

       *       *       *       *       *

[I paused, for my throat was dry, and looked up. Cary was leaning
forward intent upon every word. Dawson's face was still turned away;
he had not moved. It seemed to me that to our party of three had been
added a fourth, the spirit of Trehayne, and that he anxiously waited
there yonder in the shadows for the deliverance of our judgment. Had
he, an English public school boy, played the game according to the
immemorial English rules? I went on.]

       *       *       *       *       *

It was extraordinarily easy for me to obtain employment in the heart
of your naval mysteries. Few questions were asked; you admitted me as
one of yourselves. I took the broad open path of full acceptance of
your conditions. I first obtained employment in a marine engineering
shop at Southampton, joined a trade union, attended Socialist
meetings--I, a member of one of the oldest families in Trieste. Though
a Catholic, I bent my knee in the English Church, and this was not
difficult, for I had always attended service in the chapel at
Blundell's. To you, my friend, I can say this, for you are of some
strange sect which consigns to the lowest Hell both Catholics and
Anglicans alike. Your Heaven will be a small place. From Southampton I
went to the torpedo training-ship _Vernon_. Again I had no difficulty.
I was a workman of skill and intelligence. I was there for more than
two years, learning all your secrets, and storing them in my mind for
the benefit of my own Service at home.

It was at Portsmouth that there came to me the great temptation of my
life, for I fell in love, not as you colder people do, but as a
Latin of the warm South. She was an English girl of good, if
undistinguished, family. Though in my hours of duty I belonged to that
you call the 'working classes,' I was well off, and lived in private
the life of my own class. I had double the pay of my rank, an
allowance from my father, and my wages, which were not small. There
were many English families in Portsmouth and Southsea who were
graciously pleased to recognise that John Trehayne, trade unionist,
and weekly wage-earning workman, was a gentleman by birth and
breeding. In any foreign port I should have been under police
supervision as a person eminently to be suspected; in Portsmouth I was
accepted without question for what I gave myself out to be--a
gentleman who wished to learn his business from the bottom upwards. I
will say nothing of the lady of my heart except that I loved her
passionately, and should have married her--aye, and become an
Englishman in fact, casting off my own, country--if War had not blown
my ignoble plans to shatters. There was nothing ignoble in my love,
for she was a queen among women, but in myself for permitting the hot
blood of youth to blind my eyes to the duty claimed of me by my
country. When war became imminent, I was not recalled, as I had hoped
to be, since I wished to fight afloat as became my rank and family. I
was ordered to take such steps as most effectively aided me to observe
the English plans and preparations, and to report when possible to
Vienna. In other words, I was ordered to act in your midst as a
special intelligence officer--what you would call a Spy. It was an
honourable and dangerous service which I had no choice but to accept.
My dreams of love had gone to wreck. I could have deceived the woman
whom I loved, for she would have trusted me and believed any story of
me that I had chosen to tell. But could I, an officer, a gentleman by
birth and I hope by practice, a secret enemy of England and a spy upon
her in the hour of her sorest trial, could I remain the lover of an
English girl without telling her fully and frankly exactly what I was?
Could I have committed this frightful treason to love and remained
other than an object of scorn and loathing to honest men? I could not.
In soul and heart she was mine; I was her man, and she was my woman.
With her there were no reserves in love. She was mine, yet I fled from
her with never a word, even of good-bye. I made my plans, obtained
certificates of my proficiency in the _Vernon_, kissed my dear love
quietly, almost coldly, without a trace of the passion that I felt,
and fled. It was the one thing left me to do. My friend, that was two
years ago. She knows not whether I am alive or am dead; I know not
whether she is alive or is dead. Yet during every hour of the long
days, and during every hour of the still longer nights, she has been
with me. I have done my duty, but I do not think that I wish to live
very much longer. If death comes to me quickly--and to those in my
present trade it comes quickly--will you, my friend, of your bountiful
kindness write to [here followed a name and address] and repeat
exactly what I now say. Do not tell what I was or how I died, but just
write, "He loved you to the last." There is a portrait in a locket
round my neck and a ring on my finger. Send her those, my good friend,
and she will know that your words are true.

       *       *       *       *       *

I fled as far from Portsmouth, where my dear love dwelt, as I could
go; I fled to Greenock, that dreadful sodden corner of earth where the
rain never ceases to fall, and the sun never shines. At Greenock one
measures the rainfall not by inches, but by yards. Sometimes, not
often, a pale orb struggles through the clouds and glimmers faintly
upon the grimy town--some poor relation of the sun, maybe, but not the
godlike creature himself. For six months, in this cold desolate spot,
among a people strangely unlike the English of Devon, though they are
of kindred race, I laboured for six months in the Torpedo Factory. I
lived meanly in one room, for my Austrian pay and allowance had
stopped when War cut the channels of communication. I could, had I
chosen, have drawn money from German agencies in London, but I scorned
to hold truck with them. They were traitors to the England which
trusted and protected them, and of which they were citizens. I lived
upon my wages and preserved jealously all that I had saved during my
years of comparative affluence at Portsmouth. It was duty which made
me a Spy, not gold.

One day I was called into the office of the Superintendent, and it was
hinted to me, diplomatically, not unskilfully, that I was desired to
take service with the English secret police. I feigned reluctance,
made difficulties, professed diffidence, until pressure was put upon
me, and I was forced to accept a position which I could never by any
scheming have achieved. Those whom the gods seek to destroy, they
first drive mad--you are a very trustful unsuspicious folk, all except
you to whom I write. But even you did not, I am sure, suspect me at
the beginning. I was sent to Scotland Yard in London to be trained in
my new duties. You saw me there, and claimed me for your staff, and I
came to this centre of shipbuilding and worked here with you. I was
clothed in the uniform of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

There are two matters closely affecting my personal honour which will
seem of small moment to you--you who display always a sublime
patriotic scorn of every moral scruple; but to me they are great. I am
of the old chivalry of Italy, and I have been taught at school in
England always to play the game. Though I wore the uniform of the
R.N.V.R., it was as a disguise and cloak of my police office; I was
never attested. I have never, never, never sworn allegiance to
England. I have always kept troth with my own country; I have never
broken troth with England. Had the English naval oath been proffered
to me, I should have refused it at any hazard to my personal safety.
My honour is unstained.

You have paid me for my work, I have taken your pay, but I have not
spent it upon myself. Every penny of it for the last twelve months
will be found at my quarters. I have lived upon what I saved at
Portsmouth--lived sometimes very scantily. My funds are running low.
What I shall do when they are exhausted I cannot tell. Perhaps, who
knows, they will last my time. As for the rest, that packet of
Treasury Notes which has been my police pay, unexpended, will you take
it, my friend, and pay it to the fund for assisting the English
sailors interned in Holland? I should feel happier if they would
accept it, for I have, as you will presently learn, taken some of
their names in vain. I have not broken any oath, and I have not used
your pay; my honour is unstained.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Again I paused and glanced at Dawson. He had not even winced--at
least not visibly--when Trehayne had held him free from every moral
scruple. He must, I think, have read the letter many times before he
had handed it to me. Cary looked troubled and uneasy. To him a spy had
been just a spy--he had never envisaged in his simple honest mind such
a super-spy as Trehayne. I went on.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Now nothing was hidden from me; I had within my hands all the secrets
of England's Navy. My one difficulty--and it was not so great a one as
you may think--was communication with my country. Never for one moment
did it fail. Years before it had been thought out and prepared. I
varied my methods. At Portsmouth, during the early weeks of the War, I
had employed one means, at Greenock another, here yet another. The
basis of all was the same. It was much more difficult for me to
receive orders from my official superiors in Austria, but even those
came through once or twice. Never, during the whole of the past year,
have I failed to send every detail of the warships building and
completed here, of the ships damaged and repaired, of the movements of
the Fleets in so far as I could learn them. My country and her Allies
have seen the English at work here as clearly as if this river had
been within their own borders. John Trehayne has been their Eye--an
unsleeping, ever-watching Eye. Shall I tell you how I got my
information through? It was very simple, and was done under your own
keen nose. One of the R.N.V.R. who went with your Mr. Churchill to
Antwerp, and was interned in Holland, was a friend of mine at
Greenock, well known to me, I wrote to him constantly, though he never
received and was never meant to receive my letters. They were all
addressed to the care of a house in Haarlem where lived one of our
Austrian agents who was placed under my orders. All letters addressed
by me to my friend were received by him and forwarded post haste to
Vienna. Do you grasp the simplicity and subtlety of the device? My
friend was on the lists of those interned in Holland, no one here knew
where he lodged, the address used by me was as probable as any other;
what more natural and commendable than that I should write to cheer
him up a bit in exile, and that I should send him books and
illustrated magazines? If it had been noticed by the postal
authorities in Holland that my friend did not live at the address
which I used, it would have been supposed that I had made a mistake,
and no suspicion would have been attracted to me. But how did my
letters, books, and magazines containing information, the most secret
and urgent, pass through the censorship unchecked? That again was
simple. My letters were those which a friend in freedom in England
would write to his friend who was a captive in Holland. They were
personal, sympathetic, no more. The books and magazines were just
those which such a man as my friend would desire to have to lighten
the burden of idleness. Between the lines of my letters, and on the
white margins of the books and papers, I wrote the vital information
which my country desired to have, and I desired to give. The ink which
I used for this purpose left no trace and could not be made visible by
any one who had not its complementary secret. It is the special ink of
the Austrian Secret Service; you do not know it, your Censors do not
know it, your chemists might experiment for months and years and not
discover it. I used it always, and you never read what I wrote. Now
you will understand why I wish the small stock of money, my police
pay, which I could not myself have used without dishonour, to go to
the interned sailors in Holland. I feel that I owe to my friend some
little reparation for the crooked use to which I have put his name.

There is little more to tell. Three weeks ago I received by post from
London a copy of _Punch_. It had been despatched to me unordered, from
the office of the paper in an office wrapper. You know that English
papers may not now be sent abroad to neutral countries except direct
from the publishing offices of the newspapers themselves. It is a
precaution of the censorship, childish and laughable, for what is
easier than to imitate official wrappers? I guessed at once, when I
saw this unordered copy of _Punch_, that the wrapper was a faked one,
and that it had come to me bearing orders from my superiors. I applied
my chemical tests to the margins of the pages and upon the
advertisement of a brand of whisky appeared the orders which I had
expected. I read what was written, and I have not suffered greater
pain--no, not upon that day when I fled from Portsmouth without a
word of good-bye to the woman who possessed my heart. For I learned
then that my country, the proud, clean-fighting Austria, had given up
its soul into the keeping of the filthy Prussian assassins. I was
directed to damage or delay every warship upon which I worked, to
employ any means, to blow up unsuspecting English seamen--not in the
hot blood of battle, but secretly as an assassin. A step in rank was
promised for every battleship destroyed. Had these foul Orders
admitted of no loophole through which my honour might with difficulty
wriggle, I should have taken the only course possible to me. I should
have instantly resigned my commission in the Austrian Navy, and taken
my own life. But it happened that I had an alternative. I was ordered
to damage or delay warships. I would not treacherously slay the
English sailors among whom I worked, but I would, if I could, delay
the ships. My experience taught me that the simplest and most
effective way was to cut the electric wires, and I decided to do it
whenever opportunity offered. I could not do this for long. I was
certain to be discovered. You are not a man who fails before a
definite problem in detection. But before I was discovered I could do
something to carry out my Orders.

I cut the gun-wires of the _Antinous_. It was easy. I was the last to
leave of the shore party. Then you sent me on board the _Antigone_.
She was closely watched, the task was very difficult, and dangerous; I
was within the fraction of a second of discovery, but I took one chop
of my big shears. The job was ill done, but I could do no better.

You warned me fairly, that if injury came to the _Malplaquet_, while
under my charge, that I should be dismissed. She was my last chance as
she was your own. But what to me were risks? I had lost my love, and
my country had dishonoured herself in my eyes. I was nameless,
loveless, countryless. All had gone, and life might go too.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am completing this letter before going on board the _Malplaquet_ and
placing it where you will readily find it. I know you, my friend, more
intimately than you know yourself. I am certain that even now you are
in the ship, that you are preparing snares into which I shall in all
probability fall. Your snares are well set. If I fail, it will be
through you; if I am caught, it will be through you. But be sure of
this--if we meet in the _Malplaquet_, the fowler and the bird, it will
be for the last time. You may catch me, but you will not take me. For
a long time past I have provided against just such an outcome as this.
Upon my uniform tunics, upon my overalls, I have fixed buttons,
hollowed out, each of which contains enough of cyanide of potassium to
kill three men. If I were court-martialled and shot, there would be no
disgrace to me, an officer on secret service, but a whisper of it
might steal to Portsmouth and give deep pain to one there. No one will
learn of the petty officer of R.N.V.R. who died far away in the north.
The locket with the portrait is round my neck, the ring is upon my
finger. Both are ready waiting for you who will do what I ask and will
keep my secret from her.

I have the honour to be, sir,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN TREHAYNE.

       *       *       *       *       *

I folded up the papers and returned them to Dawson, who carefully
placed them in his pocket. In the shadows the spirit of Trehayne still
seemed to be waiting. I thought for a few minutes, and then rose to my
feet. "He was an officer on secret service," said I slowly. "An enemy,
but a gallant and generous enemy. In love and in war he played the
game, Requiescat in pace."

"Amen," said Cary.

Dawson rose and gripped our hands. "I have the locket and the ring,
and I will write as he wished. It is the least that I can do."

They buried Trehayne with naval honours as an enemy officer who had
died among us. England does not war with the dead. Though he had
fallen by his own hand, the Roman Church did not withhold from an
erring son the beautiful consolation of her ritual. Cary and I openly
attended the funeral. Dawson was officially in bed, suffering from his
much-desired attack of influenza. But in the firing party of Red
Marines, whose volleys rang through the wintry air over the body of
Trehayne, I espied one whom I was glad to see present.





PART II


_MADAME GILBERT_




CHAPTER IX


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN

If one believed Dawson's own accounts of his exploits--I can conceive
no greater exercise in folly--one would conclude that he never failed,
that he always held the strings by which his puppets were constrained
to dance, and that he could pluck them from their games and shut them
within his black box whenever he grew wearied of their fruitless
sport. He trumpets his successes, but he never speaks of his
failures--he buries them so deeply that he forgets them himself. He
veils his plans, movements, and personal appearance in a fog of
mystery. None, not even his closest associates, know what he would be
at until a job is completely finished, and finished successfully. Thus
when he succeeds, his own small world is deeply impressed--even
nauseated--by the compelling spectacle of a Dawson triumphant; when he
fails, very few know or hear of the failure. He loves the jealousy of
his equals and inferiors even more than the admiration of his
superiors. Thoroughly to enjoy life he must be surrounded by both in
the amplest measure.

What I now have to tell is the story of a failure--a failure due to
his refusal ever to allow his right hand to know what his left hand
sought to do. He never told me himself one word concerning this story.
I obtained the details partly from Captain Rust, partly from Dawson's
Deputy, but chiefly from the lady who filled the star rôle. Dawson
himself foolishly introduced me to her nearly two years later; he did
not anticipate that we should become friendly, confidential, that we
should discuss him and his little ways over cups of tea, made the
sweeter by the clandestine nature of our frequent meetings. He had not
allowed for the fascinations of the lady--fascinations so alluring
that even I, a middle-aged Father of a Family and Justice of the
Peace, was instantly reduced by them to the softest moral pulp; and he
had not allowed for the Puckish glee with which I welcomed the tale,
rolled it round in my wicked fancy, and bent its ramifications into an
orderly narrative.

       *       *       *       *       *

I very vividly remember my first meeting with the lady. She came one
day, a fortnight after I had returned from Cary's flat to my neglected
duties, heralded by a short note from Dawson. "I shall be greatly
obliged if you will give Madame Gilbert all assistance in your power.
She is one of my team." That was all, but my curiosity was piqued. I
had heard much of Dawson's team of feminine assistants--rudely called
by rivals his "harem"--and I was eager to meet one of them. I ordered
Madame Gilbert to be admitted to my presence. She came, I saw, she
conquered. When I assert that in two minutes she had plucked me from
my chair of dignity, flung me upon the Turkey carpet, and jumped upon
me with her daintily shod feet, I do not exaggerate.

She was not very young--I put her at two or three years over thirty.
She was, or gave herself out to be, a widow. She was a female
detective; I was a modest gentleman of rigid English respectability,
not without some matrimonial experience in the ways of Woman. There
was nothing in the purpose of her visit to have caused her to come
upon me as a Venus, fully armed, and to have forced me to an abject
surrender. From the feathers of her black picture hat to the tips of
her black velvety shoes she was French-clad, the French of Paris, and
wore her clothes like a Frenchwoman. She was dressed--_bien habillée,
bien gantée, bien coiffée_. Her hair was red copper, her skin--the
"glad neck" of her dress showed a lot of it--had the colour and bloom,
the cream and roses, of Devon. Her eyes were very large and of a deep
violet All these charms of dress and face and colour I could have
gallantly withstood, but the voice of her settled my business at once.
Its rich, full tone, its soft, appealing inflection, the pretty
foreign accent with which she then chose to speak English--I can hear
them now. I have always been sensitive to beautiful voices, and Madame
Gilbert's voice is beyond comparison the most beautiful voice in the
wide world.

Madame Gilbert made one or two small requests to which I gave an
immediate assent, and then she asked me to do something within my
power but much against my uncontrolled will. "Madame," said I
shamelessly, "as you are strong be merciful; let me off as lightly as
you can." She laughed, and eyed me with interest. My defeat had been
with her, of course, a certainty, but perhaps it took place more
rapidly than she had expected. "I have not asked for much," said she.

"It is not what you have asked that I fear, but what you may ask
before I get you out of my room," said I.

She laughed again and let me down very gently. I did not tell her more
than three secrets which I was pledged never to reveal. "That's all,"
said Madame Gilbert. "Thank Heaven," said I.

On the following afternoon, about four o'clock, Madame Gilbert called
again upon me. When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a
moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the
cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack
the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be
saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet
her, my mien was bold and warlike. She warmly squeezed my hand, and I
returned the attention with _empressement_. For a few minutes we
exchanged polite compliments, and then she sprung upon me in her
tender confident tones, a request so preposterous that my rapidly
flitting courage was stimulated to return. Be brave, I murmured to
myself, attack boldly, say "No," and you will be saved for ever.

"I deeply regret, madame," said I coldly, "that it is not possible for
me to accede to your wishes." It was done, and I breathed more freely
though the sweat broke out on my forehead.

Her eyes opened upon me with the pained surprised look of a deeply
disappointed child. "Oh, Mr. Copplestone," she moaned, "and I thought
that you were my friend."

I clutched tightly at the arms of my faithful chair and held to my
programme of heroic boldness.

"You shouldn't have asked me such a question. You really
shouldn't--you know you shouldn't."

Her eyelids flickered, and the violet pools which they uncovered
glittered with a moisture which was not of tears, and she laughed,
laughed, and continued to laugh with the deepest enjoyment.

"I wanted to see how much you would stand," said she at last.

From that moment her spell over me was broken, and we became friends.
I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring
siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy and
unbeautiful of female axe-grinders.

"Will you permit me to offer you a cup of tea so as to wash from your
mouth the unpleasant taste of my brutal refusal?"

"I will," said Madame Gilbert graciously.

We issued from my office and betook ourselves to a pleasant shop where
we could drink tea and nibble cakes, and talk without being overheard.
Madame Gilbert, I observed, had a healthy appetite.

We talked of ourselves and exchanged delicious confidences. "You have
asked me many questions," I said. "May I ask one of you? What are you?
You are not English, and you are not, I think, French."

"Shall I also learn a lesson from you in unkindness and say 'No'?" she
inquired. "But it would be cruel, for you have really been quite nice
to me. I will reveal the secret of my birth." She put up one hand and
began to tick off the countries which had been privileged to play a
part in her origin and education. "My father was a Swede--one; my
mother was an Irishwoman--two. I was born at Cork in Ireland, but
remember nothing about it, for my father died when I was three years
old, and my Irish mother removed instantly to Paris--three. By the
way, I have observed that the Irish and the Scotch always run away
from their own countries at the first possible opportunity. Why is
this?"

"It is much pleasanter," I remarked sententiously "to sentimentalise
over the fringes of the United Kingdom from a safe distance, than to
live in them."

"Oh! Let me see, I had got as far as Paris. When I was old enough I
went to a convent school there. I speak French rather better than I do
the Irish-English which my mother taught me."

"You speak English most charmingly. There is about it now a delicate
suggestion, no more, of Ireland. When you first came to me your accent
was distinctly foreign, French or Italian. I am afraid that you are a
wicked woman, a deceiver, and that the fascinating accent was put on
for my subduing. It was a very pretty accent."

"I have found it most effective," said she brazenly.

"When I was eighteen I was married--to an Italian (Guilberti)--four. I
should have become a Catholic, my husband's faith, but for my mother's
Protestant-Irish prejudices. She was of the Irish Church, my husband
of the Roman, so I compromised. I joined the Church of England, the
High Branch."

"Your religion is almost as complicated as your nationality."

"Yes, isn't it?" said she. Her hand was still uplifted; she had paused
at the fourth finger. "We lived in Italy and in France. Two years ago
my husband died, and shortly after the war began my mother died. I had
a little money, I was known to the Embassy in Paris as one who could
pass indifferently as English, or French, or Italian. I wanted to
strike a blow for all my countries, and I was recommended to Mr.
Dawson for"--she looked round carefully, bent her head close to mine,
and whispered--"the Secret Service. So I came for the first time that
I remember to England--five."

"But what are you?" I asked, with knitted brows; "I am not an
international lawyer."

"Mr. Dawson says"--I found that she has a childlike confidence in the
redoubtable Dawson--"that by birth I am a British subject. My Swedish
father doesn't count, as I never adopted Sweden when I came of age. My
domicile before marriage was France, but by marriage I became an
Italian. It is no matter; I am of the Entente, and I do my bit. It is
not a bad bit sometimes."

That was the first of many agreeable tea-drinkings which Madame
Gilbert and I took together.

Madame Gilbert believes herself to be, as she puts it, a woman of
"surprising virtue," and I am by no means sure that she is not right.
For the doing of her bit has led her into situations from which
nothing but the coolest of hearts and the quickest of wits could have
brought her out untarnished. She has played her part gallantly,
serenely, in the service of the Alliance; I should be a poor creature
if I judged her by British provincial standards. Among other stories
she told me the tale which I will repeat to the reader. Here and there
were gaps which I have sought diligently to fill up until the whole
has been made complete. Madame Gilbert told to me the most intimate
details without a blush, and if in my telling I startle the blood to
the cheek of the very oldest of readers, the fault will rest with me.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I have a notion, Madame Gilbert, which I should like you to follow
up," said Dawson. He was at that time (the Spring of 1915) in his
office in London--he had not yet been despatched on his spacious
pilgrimage to the northern shipyards--and Madame Gilbert sat opposite
to him in an attitude deliberately provocative. She sat back in a
comfortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed, and she
displayed a great deal more of beautifully rounded calf and perfectly
fitting silk stockings than is usual even in the best society.
Although she did not look at Dawson, she was fully conscious of the
frowning glare which he threw at the audacious leg.

"Please give me your attention--if you can. I have been out at the
Front lately, at General Headquarters, to advise upon the means of
stopping the flow of information from our lines to the enemy. All the
obvious channels have been stopped--the telephones hidden in French
cellars, the signals given by the hands of clocks, the German spies
dressed in uniforms stripped from our dead, and so on. Lots of them,
all obvious and simple. One can deal with that sort of thing by a
careful system of unremitting watchfulness. We must have caught up
with most of the arrangements made by the Germans before the war, but
they still get much more information than is good for them to have,
and for us to lose. I am convinced--and G.H.Q. agrees--that there are
many officers, especially in the French and Belgian armies, who were
planted there years before the war for the precise purpose to which
they are now put. Even in our own Army, which is expanding so rapidly,
the same thing is possible, even probable. An infantry officer spy can
do little--he knows nothing of the Staff plans, and cannot get into
communication with the enemy at all readily, without arousing
suspicion. I went into the whole thing at the Front, and I put my
finger, as I always do, upon the danger spot--the Flying Corps. Those
who fly constantly over our own and the enemy's lines have complete
information as to distribution and movements, and, if they choose, can
drop dummy bombs containing news for the enemy to pick up. A French,
Belgian, or English aeroplane 'observer' in the enemy's secret service
could convey information to him at pleasure and without the
possibility of detection. I don't suspect our own Flying Corps, except
on the general principle of suspecting everybody and everything, but I
do that of the French and the Belgians. France and Belgium were salted
through and through by the Germans in anticipation of war. There in
the Flying Corps we have a very grave danger which--But I see that you
are not attending, madame," he broke off angrily.

Her eyes withdrew from the offending leg for an instant, and flashed
at Dawson with a penetrative power which even he felt.

"Shall I repeat what you have said, word for word?" asked Madame
Gilbert coldly.

"I am not now dealing with facts, but with conjecture;" went on
Dawson, after begging her pardon. "I have nothing to go upon, but the
Germans have far more of imagination and ingenuity than we always
credit to them. They must see that with the great advance in the
Flying Corps of the Allied armies, and the opportunities which flying
men have for collecting and conveying information, one flying spy
would be worth a hundred spies on foot. For them to perceive is to
act. I therefore conclude positively that they have agents in the
flying squadrons of France and Belgium, and possibly even in our own.
So I told the C. in C., and he agreed with me. He was good enough to
say that he would never have thought of this had I not suggested it to
him. Soldiers are not detectives, madame, and very few detectives are
William Dawsons. If the War Office knew its business, every Assistant
Provost-Marshal would be, not a soldier, but a man from the Yard, and
I should be the P.M. in Chief on the Headquarters Staff. I should wear
a general's uniform and hat."

"You would look sweet," said Madame politely.

Dawson, the ex-private of Red Marines, swelled out his chest and felt
himself to be a Major-General at the least.

"They will do their best to follow up my idea at the Front, and I
shall start a campaign here. For I become more and more convinced that
the head centre of the German secret service is here in London. Paris,
even before the war, was too watchful, and now is as hot as Hell.
London reeked with spies, and though we locked up the worst of them
when war broke out, lots still remain. If you only knew how many we
laid by the heels and keep shut up without any trial, or nonsense of
that sort, you would be surprised. It is only since the Defence of the
Realm Act was passed that England has become a free country. We keep a
drag-net going continually, we have hundreds of agents in all
suspected quarters, but this wilderness of bricks and mortar is too
big even for us. Once an enemy agent has got himself into an English
or Allied uniform, he is horribly difficult to run down. That is where
you, and those like you, come in. Are you sure, my dear madame, that
you can pass without detection as a Frenchwoman or a French-Belgian?"

Madame Gilbert put up her left hand, and began to tick off her
qualifications. "My father was a Swede, my mother was Irish, I was
educated in France from the age of three to eighteen, I married an
Italian. Brussels I know almost as well as dear Paris. I can be
Parisienne or Bruxelloise--whichever you wish, Mr. Dawson."

"Good," said Dawson. "What I want of you is this. Whenever here in
London you see a French or Belgian officer wearing the badges of the
Flying Corps, mark him down. Make his acquaintance somehow; you will
know how. Entertain him, fascinate him, let him entertain you; fool
him as you would fool me if I let you; worm out his secrets, if he has
any. If you get upon a promising track, go strong; let the man make
love to you--he will, whoever he is, if you give him half a
chance--intoxicate him with those confounded eyes of yours. If you can
find only one who is in the enemy's service, you will be fully repaid
for all your trouble."

"It is a largish contract," murmured Madame thoughtfully.

"There are not so very many flying officers," said Dawson, "and they
are all young. You will work through them pretty quickly. Most of them
will be the genuine article upon whom you need not waste much time.
But the others, those whom I suspect, you must grab hold of and never
let go, whatever happens."

"I hope," said Madame primly, "that you do not expect me to do
anything--improper."

Dawson stared at her in wonder. Her big eyes, shining with the lovely
innocence of childhood, met his without a flicker. "Bless my immortal
soul," he muttered, "she is getting at me again." Then aloud, and
gravely--"My assistants are always expected to conduct themselves with
the strictest propriety."

Madame laughed softly. "I have known many men in my time, Mr. Dawson,
but I have never enjoyed any man so much as I do you."

"I appear to have rather a roaming commission," Madame Gilbert went
on, after a thoughtful pause. "Can you not give me any guidance?"

"Not at present. I am testing an idea, that is all. You must be guided
by your own wit and judgment, in which I have the utmost confidence.
Don't waste your time or fascinations on the wrong people. Find out if
among the French or Belgian flying officers, who from time to time
visit London, there are any whose connections and movements will repay
close wat

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