THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS





THE
LOST NAVAL PAPERS
BY BENNET COPPLESTONE
AUTHOR. OF "J1TNY AND THE BOYS"
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1917


First Edition .... October 1917
Reprinted October 1917
Reprinted November 1917
Reprinted December 1917
All Rights Risxkved


CONTENTS
PART I
WILLIAM DAWSON
CHAPTER I
A Story and a Visit
CHAPTER II
At Close Quarters .
CHAPTER III
An Inquisition
CHAPTER IV
Sabotage , . . . .
r
3201.59


CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
Baffled
CHAPTER VI
Guesswork
79
CHAPTER VII
The Marine Sentry .... 91
CHAPTER IX
The Woman and the Man . . . 127
CHAPTER X
A Progressive Friendship . . . 146
CHAPTER XI
At Brighton 162
CHAPTER VIII
Trehayne's Letter
PART II
MADAME GILBERT


CONTENTS Til
i
PART III
TO SEE IS TO BELIEVE
CHAPTER XII
FASS
Dawson Prescribes 187
CHAPTER XIII
The Seen and the Unseen . . . 201
CHAPTER XIV
A Coffin and an Owl .... 219
PART IV
THE CAPTAIN OF MARINES
CHAPTER XV
Dawson Reappears 243
CHAPTER XVI
Dawson Strikes 263
CHAPTER XVII
Dawson Telephones for a Surgeon . . 283


PART I
WILLIAM DAWSON





CHAPTER I
A STORY &ND 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 tem-
porary name of Richard Gary—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 umconcealed 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 mys-
terious investigations, I was perpetually appre-
hensive of his hand upon my shoulder__and his


4 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Daw-
son'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 inspira-
tion. Though Dawson was not specially intelligent
—in some respects almost stupid—he was dread-
fully, 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


6 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 accumula-
tions 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 im-
aginative—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 peace-
fully 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 in-
cluded Cary, had said: "We have concealed no-
thing from you, for we trust absolutely to your


A STORY AND A VISIT 7
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 him-
self. 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 Daw-
son 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
near anything about them?"
"I am afraid that a good many people know


8 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 light-
ing 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 fine 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


A STORY AND A VISIT II
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 sus-
picion, 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 run-
ning round showing us his pals and all their little
games. He is an Irish-American, a very unbenevo-
lent neutral, to whom we want to give a nice, easy,
happy time, so that he can mix himself up thor-
oughly 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 fright-
ened. 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 our-
selves, and that the salt will stick very firmly upon
Hagan's little tail."


12 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 pre-
pare, 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


A STORY AND A VISIT
13
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 sound-
ing 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 mis-
judged 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


A STORY AND A VISIT
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 fisher-
man—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 Daw-
son 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."


16 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 evi-
dently himself once served as a sailor. One deck-
hand, 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 morn-
ing 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


A STORY AND A VISIT 17
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 satisfac-
tion.
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


z8 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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.
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 pass-
ports 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, j
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.) "Excepfin 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 uniform, and the second time looked like a
<t 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.


A STORY AND A VISIT
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 ^uch 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 then	ouched 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; t»
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


ao THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 un-
screwed 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 comfort-
ably 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


A STORY AND A VISIT
21
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 taxicab,
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 move-
ments 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


A STORY AND A VISIT 23
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. Daw-
son 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


34 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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


A STORY AND A VISIT 25
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 epi-
taph." 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
3


26 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
officer whom in my story I had called William
Dawson, and in the corner were the letters
"C LD." (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 watch-
ing 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
27


28 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 precau-
tions, 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 satis-
faction. "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


AT CLOSE QUARTERS
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 nourish it before your colleagues and
rivals about six times a day?"
Alone among mortal men I have seen a har-
dened 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 his visit, but he had lost the advantage of mys-
terious 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 pro-
fessional 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


30 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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, laugh-
ing. "You have done your duty in warning me,
and you are so plainly hopeful that I shall in-
criminate myself that it would be cruel to disap-
point 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 informa-


32 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 doubt-
ful 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 in-
genuity is always simple. I will give you an ex-
ample. 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


AT CLOSE QUARTERS 33
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 in-
dividual 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 in-
stance 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 Northum-
berland Fusiliers. There was nothing remarkable


34 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 ex-
amined. 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 no-
thing 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


AT CLOSE QUARTERS 35
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 choco-
late 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 re-


36 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
fasten 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 care-
fully 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


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 cala-
bash pipe, and passed a box of cigars to the detec-
tive. "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 oppo-
site sides of the fire. "In my day I have played
many parts, but I cannot somehow recall the in-
cident 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 Northum-
berland Fusiliers. I am not denying the charge;
39


AN INQUISITION 41
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 dura-
tion 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 type-
writer, 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
4


AN INQUISITION
43
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 care-
fully. 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 dis-
missed. When a British subject, of decent educa-
tion 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 busi-
ness—and you, Dawson, afe 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


AN INQUISITION 45
He thinks that the war cannot be pursued success-
fully 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 pro-
mise from Dawson that I should, if possible, be
interned there. Dawson's manners and conversa-
tion surprised me. His homespun origin was evi-
dent, 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."


46 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
"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 com-
pelled 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


AN INQUISITION 47
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 lieu-
tenant 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 de-
tained."
"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 dis-
posal, Dawson. We shall now get full light."
He sat down and scribbled a reply wire directing


48 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 partings 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 head-
quarters, 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 ex-
amination." I examined the photogrr.ph 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


AN INQUISITION
49
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 suffi-
cient 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 ser-
vice?"
"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


50 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 to-
gether 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."


AN INQUISITION
51
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 peep-
hole, and if it is our man "One glance was
enough. Before me I saw him whom I had ex-
pected 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, ex-
posed 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, " In-
formant arrested: dare not send more."
"What a fool!" cried Dawson. "As if the evi-
dence 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


52 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 con-
fident 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 inspec-
tion 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."


AN INQUISITION 53
"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! Im-
pertinence! 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 Secre-
tary 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
54


SABOTAGE
55
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 stimu-
late 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 some-
times 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 dis-
guise 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


56 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 an-
cestor 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 direc-


SABOTAGE
57
tion, 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 pro-
nounced blob in the fold at the top, I address the
man instantly as Dawson, however impossibly un-
like 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
5


58 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 con-
temptuous 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 Men-
teith one or two bits of news by pretending a dis-
belief 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


SABOTAGE
59
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, Daw-
son," 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


6o THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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, Daw-
son," I repeated.
He astonished me by the suddenness of his ex-
plosion. "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 callous-
ness, 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 in-
vented 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


SABOTAGE
61
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 Men-
teith 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 Car-
lisle in order to post it. All through he has been
the most abject of tools, and received nothing ex-
cept 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 use-
ful 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 punish-
ment?"


62 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
"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 Euro-
pean 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 Taw
can do what it likes with them; they ain't my con-
cern 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


SABOTAGE
63
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 ,atid 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 cir-
cuits, 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


64 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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. 1 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 cross-
ing 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 be-
came 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
65


66 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 de-
ficient 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 Daw-
son, and he cultivates me just as he would one
of his show chrysanthemums. He has done me
the honour to appoint me his biographer extra-
ordinary."
"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


BAFFLED
67
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 cut-
ting of those electric wires."
"It is, as I told you, in my note, a queer busi-
ness. 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 rota-
tion, 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 im-
possible 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


68
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 wide-
spread 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, some-
times even in office as 'shop stewards' repre-
senting 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 recom-
mended 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 train-
ing at Scotland Yard, and then dropped down
wherever they may be wanted. Dawson, and in-


BAFFLED
60
spectors like him, have these men everywhere—in
shipyards, in shell shops, in gun factories, in aero-
plane 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 prin-
ciples. 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 com-
pelled to use them. We da 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 any-
thing, 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


BAFFLED
71
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 tele-
phone 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 con-
trol 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 detec-
tion 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 in-
valuable 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


72 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Ad-
miralty, 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, slip-
ping 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


BAFFLED
73
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 elec-
tricians, 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
6


74 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 ser-
vice 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 grand-
father 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


BAFFLED 75
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 he 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 busi-
ness it was to watch everybody and suspect every-
body. 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 bad mis-
chief 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 white-


76 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
ness 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:—


BAFFLED
77
"What I 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 after-
noon. 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. Daw-
son 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 incom-
prehensible 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 some-
thing 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


78 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 im-
probability 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 ad-
miration 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 after-
noon, and found his chief assistant there, but no
Dawson. "The old man," remarked that officer,
a typical, stolid, faithful detective sergeant, "is
79


GUESSWORK 81
"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, laugh-
ing. "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 experi-
ences of him, those of the chief assistant being par-
ticularly 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."


82 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
"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 dis-
cipline."
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."


GUESSWORK
83
"The Antigone!" cried Cary, who thought
only of ships. "The Antigone! Is she much
damaged?"
"No. Whoever tried to cut her wires was dis-
turbed, 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 Satur-
day. We can't have her delayed by any hanky
tricks, not even if we have to put the whole detec-
tive 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 ex-
amined 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


84 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Maipiaquet. 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. Be-
tween 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 Mal-
plaquet?" said I.
"I don't propose to tell you what I think," re-
plied Dawson stiffly.


GUESSWORK
85
"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 tradi-
tions, 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,


86 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
and served afloat for three years. I was then drafted
into the Naval Police. Afterwards I was recom-
mended 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, faithfullest, 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.


GUESSWORK
87
"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-joined
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 move-
ments strictly to myself. He will be in the ship,
but he won't know that I am there too. The Com-


88 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
mander 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 out-
side, 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 un-
common 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 pre-
sented him to us and then took him aside for in-
structions. When he had finished, both men re-
joined 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 elec-
trical 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 accom-


go THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 MS.—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."
91


THE MARINE SENTRY 93
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 after-
noon. 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 Comhill 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,


94 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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


THE MARINE SENTRY 95
kit that I love; upon his head the low flat cap of
his Corps. He gave us a full swinging salute, and I!
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. "Howthe—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.


96 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 inspect-
ing 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 Hp stuck out." Dawson smiled, highly
gratified. "I took in all my people at the office
this morning," he said. "They all thotfght, and
think still, that I was a messenger from the Mal-
plaquet, 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 he in. Since Sunday I have only been
twice to bed."


THE MARINE SENTRY
97
We filled him up with coffee and flattery—as ont
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 weak-
ness, 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


98 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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,


THE MARINE SENTRY
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 re-
sponsible 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 mea 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 arrange-
ments 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 Redditeh


THE MARINE SENTRY tot
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
Y


102 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Com-
mander. 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 Office Trehayne," said I calmly—
and waited for a sensation.
"Of course," replied Dawson, greatly to my
annoyance. He might have shown some astonish-
ment 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 1" cried Cary. "He looked a
smart good man."


THE MARINE SENTRY 103
"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 be-
tween 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 im-
agination 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 him-
self, 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. After-
wards 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
bis French had not been learned at an English


104 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
public school and during short trips on the Con-
tinent. 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 Anti-
gone?"
"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 Mal-
plaquet, 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


THE MARINE SENTRY 105
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 gentle-
man 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 rever-
enced 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
8


io6 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Mal-
plaquet; 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 ner-
vousness 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
107


io8 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
the endv 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


TREHAYNE'S LETTER - 109
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 senti-
ments 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


no THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 oi 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 Eliza-
bethan 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


TREHAYNE'S LETTER in
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 con-
tent 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


H2 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS'
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 Trieste. 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 Blun-
der'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


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 113
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 em-
ployment 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 South-
ampton, 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 South-
ampton 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 undis-
tinguished, 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
pwn class. I had double the pay of my rank, an


H4 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 Ports-
mouth 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 prepara-
tions, 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 §orest trial.


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 115
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 re-
serves 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,


n6 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 communi-
cation. 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 Superin-
tendent, 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 posi-
tion 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 un-
suspicious 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.


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 117
There are two matters closely affecting my per-
sonal 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 in-
terned 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


118 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 war-
ships 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


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 119
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 for-
warded 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 con-
taining 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


iao THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 kn6w
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 pre-
caution 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


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 121
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 when-
ever 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 detec-
tion. But before I was discovered I could do some-
thing 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
9


122 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 out-
come as this. Upon myuniformtunics.upon my over-
alls, 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.


TREHAYNE'S LETTER 123
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 with-
hold from an erring son the beautiful consolation of
her ritual. Cary and I openly attended the funeral.
Dawson wasofficially 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.








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, move-
ments, 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 trium-
phant; 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
127


128 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 {he lady who filled the star role. Dawson
himself foolishly introduced me to her nearly two
years laterhe did not anticipate that we should
become friendly, confidential, that we should dis-
cuss 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,


THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 delight-
ful siren, say " no" to her once, and you will be
saved! She entered, and though my knees shud-
dered 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 sur-
prised look of a deeply disappointed child. "Oh,
Mr. Copplestone," she moaned, " and I thought that
you were my friend."


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 131
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 con-
tinued 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 ques-
tions," 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 unkind-
ness and say 'No '?" she inquired. "But it
would be cruel, for you have really been quite nice
to me. 1 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—


THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 compro-
mised. 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


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 133
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 in-
differently 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
limitless 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-drink-
ings 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 ser-
vice 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


134 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 de-
liberately provocative. She sat back in a com-
fortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed,
and she displayed a great deal more of beautifully
rounded call and perfectly fitting silk stocking 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 Head-
quarters, 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, especi-
ally in the French and Belgian armies, who- were
planted there years before the war for the precise


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 135
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 con-
jecture," 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


136 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 con-
clude positively that they have agents in the
flying squadrons of France and Belgium, and pos-
sibly 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. Pans, 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


138 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
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 com-
mission," 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 watching here and at the Front.
Sift them out. When you get upon a track which
seems promising, follow it up, and do not be—what
shall I say ?—do not be too squeamish. Money is
no object. Behind us is the whole British Treasury,
and you can have whatever you want. Will you
take on the contract, madame?"
"I will do my best," she replied soberly, " and I
will not be—too squeamish. I can look after my
myself, my friend."


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 139
In another room of the great building upon the
Thames Embankment sat Deputy Chief Inspector
Henri Froissart, a French detective officer who-had
been "lent" to the English service." Opposite
him was sitting a young handsome man in the
uniform of a captain in the British Army. Frois-
sart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect
of Dawson, his immediate chief. "This English
Dawson, with whom it is my misfortune to work,
is of all men the most impossible. He is clever, as
the Devil, but secretive—my faith! He tells me
nothing. He lives in disguise of body and mind.
There are twenty men in his face, his figure, and his
dress. He comes to me as a police officer, a doctor,
a soldier, a priest, even as an old hag who cleans
the stairs. He deceives me continually, and laughs,
laughs. He is a reproach and an insult. I have it
in my mind to score off him; what do you say, mon
ami?"
Froissart spoke in French, and the English officer
replied in the same language. "With pleasure, in
the way of business. I have been placed at your
orders, not at old man Dawson's. Go ahead, what
is the game?"
Froissart nodded approval. "I think that you
can pass as a French officer or a French-speaking
Belgian. Is it not so?"
"You should be able to certify that better than
I can myself," replied the officer modestly. "As a
boy I was brought up at Dinard in Normandy. I
served two years in the French Army as a volunteer,
a gunner. Then I went to St. Cyr, but England,
the home of my father, claimed me, and I was given
a commission in the Artillery. That was two years
ago. I volunteered for the Flying Corps, served in


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 141
guises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I
fail to recognise his filthy, obscene countenance.
But I am loyal, of a true loyalty unapproachable."
"I believe you, though you have a queer way
of showing it. What is now the game that you
want to play off on the old man as a proof of your
unapproachable loyalty?"
"He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He
discerns the German plans before they are made.
He has their agents within a wire net which closes
whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean
of the foul brood which festered here before the
war. I have great, limitless confidence in this
Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all
his assistants the most loyal. He now suspects that
contained within the Flying Corps of us, the Bel-
gians, and the English are observers in the pay of
Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it
is true, what greater opportunity could be given to
any spies! To fly over our lines, to learn of every-
thing, and then to convey the news to the enemy
by way of the air! If he had told me of this most
perspicuous of theories, I would have aided him
with all the wealth of my genius! But no, he tells
to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his
web like a great fat female spider, but he tells me
nothing. It is my belief that he despises me
because I am French, aristocrate, and catholique.
But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score
most bitterly off him; I will do in my way success-
fully what he vainly seeks to do in his way. Con-
spuez Dawson!"
"This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus
case," said the Englishman.
"Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 143
Let Dawson watch the men themselves; but watch
you such women as I indicate—women who appear
to be French and yet are not French. I will speak
to the Chief, not to Dawson, but to the Great Chief
of us all. You shall be dressed in the tenue of a
French flying officer; you shall avoid French or
Belgian officers who might ask questions the most
embarrassing. You shall make the acquaintance
of women who appear to be French, yet who are
not French. Grip on to these, my friend, entertain
them, make yourself of the most fascinating and
agreeable, give to them attentions and love of the
warmest. And when after two or three glasses of
champagne you repose at ease with your arm
about their waists, get you at their secrets. You
are young, handsome, and your eye is bold. I give
you a pleasant task—the deception of deceiving
women. In my younger days what joy would I not
have taken in it."
Captain Rust became very gloomy during this
speech, for, though French in education, he was by
instinct an Englishman.
"I don't like the business at all. It sounds mean
and grubby, ugh! Not quite what one would ask
of a gentleman."
Froissart was genuinely surprised. "What do you
say, not for a gentleman? Am I not a gentleman,
I, who speak, a Froissart, a Count of I'ancien regime,
a Royalist almost? I offer you a task which com-
bines business and pleasure in the most delicious of
proportions. And you call my offer mean and
grubby, meprisable et crotte! I do not ask you to
consort with those of the demi-monde. The women
who are of most danger to our countries are not
courtisanes; they are of the monde, fashionable.


144 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
They meet officers in society; they humour and flatter
them; they display a melting softness of sympathy
and interest. I do not ask you, my friend, to
endanger your English virtue."
The tone of wondering contempt with which he
ended brought a smile to Rust's lips.
"I am not so very virtuous, monsieur. But I am
English, and I try, vainly perhaps, to be a gentle-
man. It seems to me a dirty business to make up
to women in order to wheedle out their secrets."
"We have to do worse than that in defence of
our country. We have to plot and counterplot,
to He and deceive. But we do these things, and
you must do them too, if you would be of the Secret
Service. Content yourself. Think always that it
is for la belle France or for la belle Angleterre, for la
grande Alliance. You have qualifications unusual;
you are young, handsome, and French in manner
and speech. You are a soldier; it is for me to
command, and for you to obey. Besides, think
you; if success comes to us, picture to yourself the
desolation of Dawson!"
"Desolating Dawson is more your fun than mine.
I have no grudge to work off on the old man. Since
you command, I will obey. I will do my best, but,
to be quite frank, I do not like the job."
"But you will do it. I think that you English,
slow to move, do best those things which you like
least. You despise the Secret Service, what you
call dirty spying, yet you do it to admiration—with
a courage and sang froid most wonderful. You hate
to begin a war, and yet when you fight you are, of
all people, the most unwilling to stop. When we
French and the Russians yonder have supped of
this war to the dregs, you English will just have


THE WOMAN AND THE MAN 145
begun to find your appetites. Stop? you will
cry. Makepeace? Be content? Why, we have just
got our second wind! It will be the same with
you, my friend. You begin reluctantly, but when
the chase becomes hot, you will be on fire with zest.
You will not trouble then that vous vous faites
crottes."
"I will do my best; I cannot say more than that."


CHAPTER X
A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP
Neither Madame Gilbert nor Captain Rust are
very communicative concerning their adventures,
until they begin to speak of that day when first they
met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy
Hotel. They both then become voluble. I rather
gather—though I did not cross-examine them at
all closely—that they had been a good deal bored.
Their instructions were so very vague, and the
best method of carrying them out so far from clear
to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aim-
lessly about the resorts most affected by .officers on
leave, spent much money, made a good many
pleasant acquaintances, but progressed not at all
in their researches. Madame did not meet with
any French or Belgian flying officers who seemed
likely to be German agents, and Captain Rust
failed to discover a siren who appeared to be French
and yet was not French, and who aroused any
plausible suspicion that she dwelt in the central web
of German intrigue. Madame began to think that
for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her
upon a wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced
that Froissart's vivid longing to score off the detested
146


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 147
Dawson had misled him in the selection of the
means to bring about this much-desired consumma-
tion. They told me little of these wanderings, but
when I asked for details of their first meeting, the
one with the other, and their subsequent rather
startling proceedings, they broke into eager speech.
It was not until my keen and curious eye began to
penetrate the delicate mysteries surrounding their
surprising week-end visit to Brighton that Rust
again became tongue-tied. He reprehensibly slurred
over the most entertaining details. Madame Gilbert,
on the other hand, revealed everything with that
plain-spoken frankness which, in any other woman,
would appear to be brazen. Madame is thirty-two;
Captain Rust no more than twenty-six. He is a
modest young man in spite of his French training;
she, I am afraid, is a hussy. But I would not have
her other than she is.
Madame Gilbert was taking tea alone in the court-
yard of the Savoy. She occupied one place at a
table laid for four. It was a fine afternoon in late
spring, motors and taxis ran in and out unceasingly,
the open-air restaurant began to fill up, but none
ventured to approach any one of three empty places
at Madame's table. She was, as usual, perfectly
dressed—though she assures me that her clothes
cost next to nothing. "It is the wearing of them,
my friend, not the cost which counts." I fancy
that her unshakable temper and her gay humour,
like her beauty, are really based, as she says, upon
her complete freedom from ailments. She loves
life, and this, perhaps, is why life loves her.
Madame Gilbert, though to the unobservant eye
intent upon her tea and cakes, saw every one who
came and went. Many officers were in the restaurant,


148
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
but one only attracted her special notice. He was
a young handsome man in the field-service kit of
the French Army, and upon his sleeves and cap
were the wings of the Flying Corps. This young
man was looking for a table, but could not find one
that was empty. She waited until he paused not
far from her, and then, sweeping her eyes slowly
over the crowded tables, brought them to rest upon
his face. He was quite an attractive-looking young
man. There was an appeal in his dark eyes as
they met hers; he was imploring her of her gracious
kindness to permit him to occupy one of her super-
fluous seats, and she telegraphed to him an encour-
aging reply. The French officer approached,
saluted, and bowed: "Is it permitted, madame,
to inconvenience you?" he asked humbly. "The
tables are very full, or I would not venture to in-
trude." He spoke in careful, accurate English, and
with an accent markedly French.
"Please favour me by sitting down at once,"
replied Madame. "I feel myself to be very selfish
with my four places and one small person." She
spoke in careful, accurate English, and with an accent
markedly French.
"Ah I" he exclaimed, seating himself opposite
to her, and breaking intp French. "Madame is of
my country, is it not so?"
"But certainly," said Madame in the same
language, which was to her a second mother-tongue.
"I am of Paris. If you had not been French I should
not have dared to hint to you that a place at this
table might be taken."
For a few minutes they talked together in the
ceremonious style for which the French language is
the perfect medium, and then dropped into more


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 149
easy friendly speech. Madame, when she likes the
look of a man, becomes intimate at the shortest
notice, and Rust, like every man born of woman,
succumbed helplessly, instantly, to the wiles of
Madame. Though she had finished tea, she urged
Rust not to be hurried; there was plenty of time,
and one did not often have the happiness to meet a
French officer in this dreary London. She enveloped
him in her meshes of kindliness, and he responded
by thinking to himself that she was the loveliest,
most friendly creature whom he had ever met.
Madame knows a great deal more of military details
than most male civilians, but when she talked to
Captain Rust at the Savoy, her ignorance of the
Flying Corps was absolute. She asked questions,
quite intelligent questions, and he bubbled over with
eagerness to answer them. Poor Rust; I can
picture the humbling scene. He made an ass of
himself, of course, but not a greater ass than I
always make of myself—and I am not far from
double his age—whenever Madame gets to work
upon me.
Within ten minutes she had wheedled out of him
an account of his accident. "I was out on patrol
duty," he explained, "spotting for submarines
between the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the
weather is fine we can see deep down into the water,
a hundred feet or so, and quite easily make out a
submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane
fitted with a 90-h.p. R.A.F. engine "He paused
and quickly glanced at her, for he realised his blunder
the instant the slip had been made. Madame was
all eager attention—what did she know of the
marques of aeroplane engines 1—" It was a day of
rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and late in


150 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
the afternoon my engine began to overheat and
miss fire. I did my utmost to struggle towards
Do , Dunkirk, but the beastly thing gave out
altogether, and down I dropped into the sea. I had
an ordinary land plane without floats, and was
obliged to cut myself clear and keep up as best I
could with my air belt. It was a weary time, waiting
to be picked up, all that night and all the next day;
the cold of the water struck right through me, and
I was senseless, like a dead man, when at last, thirty
hours afterwards, one of our destroyers found
me floating there, picked me up, and carried
me into Dover. I was in hospital for six weeks,
crippled with rheumatic fever, and my heart went
wrong. It is much better now, and I hope soon to
get back to flying again. I am still on sick leave."
"Poor heart," sighed Madame, and smiled to
herself. ... "He looked at me," she explained
long afterwards, "as if there was still life in his
poor strained heart. It was a real kindness to give
it some gentle exercise."
"And when you are well you will again fly for
France?" she inquired.
"Ah, yes. I yearn for the day when the obdurate
doctors will permit me to fly again—for France. . . .
And you, madame, who are so kind to a poor
crippled soldier, is it permitted to ask"
"I am, alas, a widow." She paused, and though
demurely looking at her empty tea cup, saw has
eyes light up. [" The silly boy was pleased that I
was a widow," she explained. "As if that mat-
tered."] "My poor husband fell for France—
at Le Grand Couronne. That was eight months
ago, and I am still inconsolable. I love to meet the
brother officers of my dear lost husband. He was


15* THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
As they pressed hands at parting, Rust hesitated.
"May one hope, madame, to meet you again. Your
kindness has been great, and I feel that I have made
a new friend."
"And I also," sighed Madame. "I often come
here to drink the English tea. It is a pleasing
custom of London."
"To-morrow?" he inquired anxiously. "It is
possible," replied Madame, very graciously.
* * *
"Well," said I, when Madame had told me of
this meeting, "I hope that you had the grace to
feel ashamed of yourself. To deceive an invalided
flying officer with your tale of the Captain of Terri-
torials, blown up by a shell beside his general upon
Le Grand Couronn6. It was abominable."
"It was the unknown grave which fetched him,"
said Madame cheerfully.
"Worse and worse. Why could you not have
told him the truth?"
"Because, my stupid friend, the Captain Rouille
interested me, and I was on duty. What was a
captain in the French Flying Corps doing with an
aeroplane driven by a 90-h.p. Royal Aircraft Factory
engine (R.A.F.)? Why should he speak of ' our'
destroyers, referring to those of the British, when
he ought to have said the ' English' destroyers as
a French officer would have done? Why again
should he hesitate over his name, and then give so
impossible a one as Rouille? No, I had discerned
plainly that M. le Capitaine Rouille, whatever he
might be, was not the man he pretended that he
was. He spoke French perfectly, but he was not
in the French flying service. He was English. I


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 153
recollected my instructions from the great Dawson
—to stick to any one who excited my suspicions, to
let him make love to me if need be, and to discover
his secrets. I am, my friend, a martyr to duty.
Besides, le Capitaine Rouille was a handsome young
man, very attractive; I was not grieved at the
thought that he might pursue me with his atten-
tions."
"Why," I asked in turn of Rust, "did you begin
by telling lies to the charming Madame Gilbert?"
"I was in French uniform," said he, " and I had
to play my part."
"And a nice mess you made of it," said I rudely.
"I am afraid that I did. That slip about the
R.A.F. engine was unpardonable. But then how
was I to know that the dear woman knew as much
about aeroplanes as I did myself? She was like
Desdemona at the feet of Othello, and, of course, I
lost my head. You are as crazy about her as I am,
with less excuse. Besides, I was on duty. Before
Madame had spoken to me for five minutes, I was
certain that she was not French. She spoke per-
fectly, but there was a little accent, a delightful
accent, that told me she was Irish. That soupcon
of a brogue which gives so delicate a spice to her
English appears also in her French. My mother
was an Irish woman, though I have never lived in
Ireland. You know that all the Irish, especially
those of America or of France, are watched most
carefully by the police. Many of them hate the
English, and spy upon us. When, therefore, I per-
ceived that Madame, though she appeared to be
French was by birth Irish, I recollected my instruc-
tions from Froissart. It was my duty to stick to
her, to study her. If necessary to make love to her.
ii


154 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
It did not seem wholly disagreeable to me," he
added dryly, " to make love to Madame Gilbert."
"I forgive you," said I, "though, from what I
learn, you somewhat exceeded your instructions."
* * *
If I were not a most serious writer, this veracious
history of Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust would
tend to degenerate into comedy, possibly to reach
the depths of farce. But, to one of my grave bent
of mind, wasted deception, wasted energies, and,
above all, wasted national money, excite rather to
tears than to laughter. What a spectacle was this
which I place before the reader! Here were two
trusted members of the English Secret Service
pitting against one another those treasures of intelli-
gence, wit, and sensibility which they were em-
ployed—and paid—to exercise in the defence of
their countries. It may be conceded that one of
them was more or less honest. Rust, I am con-
vinced, had persuaded himself—he has no marked
ability or attractions of any kind that I can dis-
cern—that his duty impelled him to watch Madame
with exceeding closeness of attention. That his
strong inclinations marched with his duty may
be allowed him as a privilege; the plea of duty
was not, I believe, merely an excuse. But what
can one say in defence of Madame, one who has
stored within her little copper-covered head enough
brains to furnish a brigade, say, of the Women's
Emergency Corps? She had perceived that Rust
was an English officer masquerading as a French-
man, yet she could not have thought that he was
a German spy. Why did she not ask him point
blank what he was doing in that galley? She has
-


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 155
never supplied me with a credible explanation.
She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the instruc-
tions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible
way granted to her the vaguest of roving commis-
sions. She parades her duty before me in the most
tattered of rags.
Upon the following afternoon, when Madame
Gilbert drove up to the Savoy in a taxi-cab at half-
past four, a young man, in the uniform of a French
officer, opened the door and handed her out. It
was, of course, Captain Rust, who had waited palpi-
tating upon the curb for some three-quarters of an
hour. He led her to a small table which he had
reserved for another charming duet of tea, cakes,
and conversation.
At this second meeting, Madame bent herself to
the deft cross-examination of Rust. "Had the
Captain Rouille joined St. Cyr as a cadet officer,
or had he served in the ranks of the French Army?"
He had served in the ranks, and broke into details
of his training and garrison service which convinced
her that he really had served. She became thought-
ful. Rust, eager to show off his accomplishments,
explained that he had been recommended for a
commission and had joined St. Cyr. More details
followed, all of a verisimilitude wholly convincing.
Madame, who knew France and the French Army
up and down, became more thoughtful and more
puzzled. It was plain that Rust had really served
in the ranks of the Army, and had been at St. Cyr.
Yet he was an Englishman and an officer of the
English Flying Corps! She asked further questions,
innocent, flattering questions, seeking to discover
what had happened to him after his course at St.
Cyr. He did his best, but he was of inconsiderable


156 'THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
agility of mind and deficient in imagination, He
had been, he said, with Maunoury's Sixth Army,
which, emerging from Paris in red taxis, had fallen
upon the exposed right wing of General von Kluck.
His description was accurate enough, but the lavish
details of former narratives were lacking. He had
been officier de liaison on the Aisne; again the little
intimate touches were lacking. He had joined the
flying corps, but omitted to explain how he had
learned to fly. It had been at Farnborough, but
he could hardly admit this, and was, unhappily,
quite ignorant of the French flying grounds.
Madame'squick mindbegan to see daylight. "How
came it, my friend, that you were flying upon the
coast when you suffered that accident, so terrible,
and paralysed that poor brave heart of yours?"
Madame asked the question in the most natural,
sympathetic way. It was a facer for Rust, who
regretted that he had been so communicative at
that first meeting. '' I was lent to the N aval Wing,''
he explained, and avoided particulars. By this
time Madame had sorted out his service. She
was quite sure that he had not been with Maunoury
or upon the Aisne, but that in some manner, as
yet not clear, he had left St. Cyr to pass into the
English Army.
When in his turn Rust sought diffidently to
penetrate the mystery surrounding Madame Gilbert,
she overflowed with untruthful particulars. She
resembles her master Dawson in this—it is unwise
to believe one word which she wishes you to believe.
Of her early life in Paris she spoke with emotion.
She was the beloved only child of a French doctor—
ah, the most learned and pious of men! He^died
early smitten by disease contracted during bis



A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 157
gratuitous practice amongst the friendless poor. A
most noble parent! Her mother, too, a saint and
angel, had gone aloft shortly after seeing her daughter,
Madame, happily married to a maker of caloriferes
(anthracite stoves). "I am unworthy of those
so noble parents," wailed Madame in broken tones.
It was not until they were about to separate that
Madame Gilbert herself threw him a bone of truth
designed to test his appetite for curiosity. "I must
fly," exclaimed she; "I am a woman tris occwpee.
I work, oh, so very hard, for my belle France and to
avenge the death of my glorious husband." The
blown-up stove maker did not seem to Rust to be a
figure of glory, yet he forced himself again to
express the deepest sympathy. "Yes," went on
Madame, "I would avenge him. I work "—she
glanced round cautiously, and then whispered—" I
work for the gouvernement anglais. I am an agent
de police."
"Were you not rather rash," I asked of Madame
Gilbert, " to give yourself away so completely? He
might not have been so thorough an ass as you
thought."
"My friend," said Madame calmly, "I had
taken tea with him twice, and had satisfied myself
that he was not, what you call, very bright. A
dear fellow, handsome, a gentleman of the English
pattern, but not bright. If I had not helped him
to get a move on, I might have lunched with him,
had tea, dined with him, attended theatres, tra-
versed in motors your pleasant countryside, flirted,
until I had become a very old woman, and there
would have been nothing to show for all my exer-
tions. I remembered the instructions of Mr. Dawson,
I recalled to myself my duty, I was compelled to


158 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
discover who and what was this Capitaine Rouille,
and I could only succeed by forcing him to reveal
himself—to give himself away. When I said that
I was an agent of the English police, he did rot believe
me; but he was curious—he watched me. I gave
him much to watch and to imagine that he had
discovered. Then one began to get forward."
I am ignorant of the diplomatic pourparlers
which led up to the week-end trip to Brighton, that
remarkable trip which ended I'affaire Rust. It must
have been planned by Madame; it bears the un-
mistakable imprint of her impish wit; it was, too,
a bold development of her designs for the effective
speeding up of Rust. He would have dallied all
through the summer, looking feebly for an oppor-
tunity to ravish a despatch-case which always
accompanied Madame and which had become the
inseparable and ostentatious " gooseberry " at their
meetings. Madame declared that it was stuffed
with papers the most secret. "The English Govern-
ment would be desolated if they passed for one
moment out of my hands." This despatch-case
played parts quite human. It was perpetually pro-
vocative of Rust's curiosity, and a reminder that
the agreeable pastime of making love to Madame
was not an end in itself, but a means whereb)' he
might discharge his official duties. It was, more-
over, a visible sign that Madame was a woman,
tres occupee, and a self-styled agent de police; it
rested always silent at her side as a protector of
innocence. Rust becomes uneasy when that case is
mentioned, but Madame bubbles over at the thoughts
of her petite chere portefeuille, cette idee de genie.
*
*


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 159
-
She brags of her genius, of her notion si lumineuse,
of her guef-d-pens si adorable.
While Madame must have planned the Brighton
trip, she contrived that the suggestion should come
timidly, deprecatingly, from Rust. She would have
scorned so crude an advance, one, too, falling so far
short of her high standard of womanly virtue, as a
direct hint that she was willing to pass three days
in a seaside hotel with a young man! Mais, non.
Ce serait une betise incroyable I I can imagine her
hints, increasing in strength as she beat against the
obtuse heaviness of Rust's intellect. But I cannot
imagine how any one, least of all the brilliant Frois-
sart, should have conceived that lumpish soldier
to be capable of the finesse needful for the Secret
Service. He has since been returned empty, and
I do not wonder at it.
Madame must have lamented the stuffiness of
London during the bright days of early June, and
painted, in her enthusiastic French fashion, a picture
of southern England and the glittering Channel.
"Ma foi, mon ami, what would I not give for one
hour of peace and rest, away from this swarming
hive of men and women? It is as yet too cold to
swim in that sea which washes the shores of my
beautiful France—and bears the so gallant English
soldiers to her help—but I would love to sit upon
the sands and gaze, gaze across the waters towards
my poor bleeding land. But, alas, I am a woman
tres occupee." After a great deal of this sort of thing,
Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was
weary, and that nothing could be more delightful
than to sit beside Madame upon those sands and to
bewail with her the woes of their common country.
The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame's


A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP 161
stupid, you do not understand how infinitely pre-
cious to us poor women is the spotless bloom of
our reputation." Rust protested that the bloom
upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes,
more stainless than the reputation of Madame.
How she must have grinned! He made plans,
rude, coarse plans, for the shielding of the so precious
reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently
put them aside. *' In my hands," she declared
grandly, " le Capitaine Guilbert has left his honour,
and I will guard it with my life. Alas, what is my
life when my heart is buried in that lonely grave
upon le Grand Couronne in which I pray rests his
much-blown-up body. I myself will devise the
means by which I can grant you a mark of my con-
descending forgiveness and preserve sans reproche
the honour of a Guilbert."
I confess that I have drawn upon my imagination
for most of this touching scene, but, knowing
Madame as I do, I am sure that I have given the
hang of it.


CHAPTER XI
AT BRIGHTON
Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust travelled to
Brighton on the Friday evening in the Pullman
train. They occupied different carriages. Their
hotel, one of those facing the sea which washed the
far-off shores of their beloved, bleeding France, had
been selected by Madame—" I desire a hotel,
my friend, not a caravanserai!" Madame arrived
ten minutes before Rust, and had disappeared
within her own appartement when his cab drove up
to the doors. Rust then booked his room, one upon
the second floor. He took that which was offered,
and did not observe that Madame's room was also au
second. But he did notice—he could not help it—
that the imposing lady in charge of the hotel office
was French. "Ah, monsieur le capitaine," said
she, beaming caresses upon him, "with what joy
do I perceive the tenue de campagne of my own
Army. I will gladly grant to you one of the rooms
of the very best and at the price of the lowest.
The patron, he also is French, and would be furious
if I did not give the most cordial welcome to an
officier frangais." Rust thanked the lady of the
bureau, and heartily approved Madame's choice of
an hotel.
162


AT BRIGHTON
"One moment, if you please," said I to Madame,
who supplied me with these details. "I perceive
that both the rooms, yours and Rust's, were upon
the second floor. Is it in this way, you shameless
woman, that you preserved from reproach the
honour of the late imaginary stove man?"
Madame sighed, and turned upon me the look
which, in my mind, Lhave labelled " Innocence un-
justly traduced." One of these days, with German
thoroughness, I shall prepare a numbered and an-
notated catalogue of Madame Gilbert's looks and
tones. Though it cannot teach her sex anything
which the youngest member does not already know,
it will be full of valuable instruction and warning
for the innocent male.
"Am I responsible," wailed Madame, "for
the allotment of rooms by hoteliers?"
"Most certainly," I said severely. "I do not
know your methods. It is not given to man to
penetrate the unfathomable duplicity of woman.
But I am convinced that had you wished it, you would
have been placed au premier, and Rust consigned to
the uttermost cock-loft in the roof."
Madame and Rust dined that first evening at
separate tables, but discovered in one another old
friends when they accidentally met afterwards in the
lounge. ..." What happiness, can it indeed be
le Capitaine Rouille, the friend closer than a brother
of my poor slain husband ?"..." Madame Guil-
bert! Can it be you whom I meet thus unexpectedly?
You whom I have not seen since that dreadful
never.to-be-forgotten day upon which I broke to
you the news, the terrible news "Rust's voice
failed; even Madame, who thinks little of his
ability, admits that he performed on this occasion to


164 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
admiration. The rencontre was a most affecting one,
conducted in voluble French in the full blaze of
publicity in a crowded hotel lounge. The English
audience was impressed and honestly sympathetic;
our insular reserve has been melted in the fires of
war. "It is a French lady, poor thing, who has
lost her husband," they whispered, the one to
another, "and that handsome fellow in ordinary
evening-dress is her man's brother officer, who was
with him at the last, and who brought the sad news
to her. How sweet she looks, and how tenderly sym-
pathetic he is!" The eyes of the men had already
been drawn to Madame's royal beauty and those of ■
the women to her dress, a masterpiece of Paquin.
Now that she had met Rust the men were sorrowful,
regretting a vanished opportunity of making her
acquaintance, and the women were relieved. She
was too formidable a rival to be at large, alone and
unattended, but now she would be monopolised
naturally and properly by her good-looking com-
patriot. So when Madame and Rust slipped away
to a corner of the lounge, kindly eyes followed them,
and the voices of the censorious had no excuse to
be raised. "You are a wonder, madame," whis-
pered Rust. "And you, my friend, did not so
badly," replied Madame in frank approval.
They separated early that evening, for Madame,
who knew not what it was to feel really tired,
shammed fatigue as a reason for retiring betimes.
To her came Marie, a little dark French femme de
chambre of the second floor, imploring to be allowed
to assist at the night toilet of a desolate widow of
France. While Marie brushed out the long, rich,
copper hair the two chattered unceasingly of France
and the Army of steel-hearted poilus which held


AT BRIGHTON
165
the frontiers of civilisation away yonder in Picardy,
Artois, Champagne, and the Vosges. Marie herself
had a man out there of whose welfare she had heard
nothing since the war began. She had received no
letters, and the French publish no casualty lists.
"Mon cher petit homme est mort, madame. C'est
certain, mais j'espere toujours." There are many,
many Frenchwomen to whom the death of their
loved ones is certain, though they hope always.
"I felt rather a pig talking fibs to the poor girl,"
confessed Madame.
Madame Gilbert had made her plans with thought-
ful care, and proposed to carry them out with hardi-
hood. She had determined to work so adroitly on
the Saturday upon the curiosity and " poor strained
heart" of Rust that he would be speeded up to run
big risks. He did not know that, however judiciously
frail her conduct might be, she was a very dragon* of
virtue in defence of her honour. "I gave my heart,"
said she to me quite seriously, " to the Signor Guil-
berti, one far, far different from le mari imaginaire of
le Grand Couronne\ Until, if ever, I give my heart
again no man shall possess me. I play, I kiss, I
philander—as you call it—but what are these trifles?
Des bagatelles, rien du tout /" He did not realise her
serene indifference to the small change of love and
her respect for its true gold. But I do not think that
Rust, when Madame consented to be his companion
at Brighton, seriously misjudged her motives. He
did not know, of course, or in the last degree suspect,
that she designed his capture as a professional
victim.
Again and again she had told him that she was an
agent of the English police, and again and again,
as she intended, he had disbelieved her. She was


166 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
so incomparably his intellectual superior that she
could make him believe or disbelieve precisely as
she chose. She made him think that she had come
to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of
her kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He
believed; for never was Rust, even Rust, so idiotic
as to suppose that she had succumbed before his
charms and had come to throw herself into his arms.
But for the machinations of Madame the visit
would, I am sure, have passed without incident.
Rust would not have lost his turnip of a head. He
would, out of loyalty to his orders from Froissart,
have tried to grab the despatch-case and ravish
its secrets. But he would not have done what he
did, at the risk of compromising the bloom of her so
precious reputation, if she had not deliberately
worked him up to do it. Therefore, while I acquit
Rust of evil intention, my reproofs, my grave
reproofs—at which she laughs and snaps her
fingers—are reserved for that unscrupulous Madame.
At breakfast Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust
found that a private table, a table of the best in a
bay window facing the sea, had been reserved for
them by orders of the patron. The news of their
pitiful rencontre in the lounge had sped to his ears;
he had wept copiously before his sympathetic staff,
and declared that the bereaved widow and the so
gallant captain should lack for nothing in his hotel.
"If it were not that I feared to offend their delicacy
I would refrain from presenting to them 1'addition.
Make, I pray you, mademoiselle du bureau, their
charges of the lowest." He was a most noble
patron.
The path of the wicked was thus made smooth.
By the English guests, by the entire staff, it was


AT BRIGHTON
considered inevitable, indeed highly becoming, that
Madame and Rust should devote themselves wholly
to one another. Had they embraced in public, and
wept many times a day upon one another's necks,
the staff—half of which was French—would have
deemed the exhibition most seemly and fitting, and
the English, though embarrassed, would not have
been censorious. By so much has war brought to
us an understanding of the simple honest hearts of
our closest Allies. In ceasing to be insular we are
ceasing to worship our wooden conventional gods.
Madame, who, as I have before remarked, says the
most frightful things in her soft, musical voice, re-
garding one the while with frank, steady eyes, com-
mented thus upon the attitude of le patron and his
assistants towards them. "They wrapped us about
so thoroughly in their tender sympathy that nothing
which we had chosen to do in mutual consolation
could have shocked them."
I do not propose to weary the reader by detailing
at length the progress of Madame's Saturday cam-
paign. Her methods of offence will, by now, have
become clear. To the "suffocating gas" of her
smiles, and the " liquid fire" of her eyes she had
added the devastating " Tank "—her despatch-case.
She worked its mysteries unceasingly. When it was
not under her own hand it reposed—during meal
times, for example—in the steel safe of le patron.
All except one paper, of the most thrilling import-
ance, which never left her person. This small, un-
obtrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame,
the destinies of nations depended, was hidden
always—happy paper—in the bosom of her corset.
Did she not, inquired Rust, greatly daring,
find it rather hard and scratchy? To him its


168 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
resting-place seemed too delicate a spot to be
used as a general store. Madame frowned at the
allusion to so intimate a topic, and Rust, terrified,
implored her pardon, which was graciously vouch-
safed.
"You should not, mon ami, speak to me as if
I were that which you once thought me—a light
woman." She reduced him nearly to tears, and
then, in kindly consolation, permitted him to hold
her hand. Both as a pretended French officer,
and as an English agent of the Secret Service, Rust
was the most derisory of frauds.
During the day the pair of plotters were insepar-
able, and Madame played continually with un-
failing deftness upon the two strings of Rust's poor
heart and of his intense curiosity, which she clearly
perceived though she did not know it to be pro-
fessional. When the heart swelled with stimulated
emotion, and Rust began to show inconvenient
fondness, Madame would frown reproof and lead
the despatch-box into action. Very often she would
carry her hand to that pleasant spot where nestled
the paper of so great international importance, and
she would speak of it and of the terrible responsi-
bilities which rested upon her as a secret agent de
police. "When I carry a document such as this,"
she would say, " one pour faire se crever les Boches, it
never leaves my bosom all the day and rests under
my pillow by night. Under my pillow, mon ami."
She dwelt upon that pillow, and raised in the mind
of Rust a charming vision of a white lace-edged sur-
face upon which was spread out a lovely disorder of
red copper hair. She so worked upon him that his
emotions and his duties became inextricably mixed.
Somehow he must secure that paper and solve the


AT BRIGHTON
169
baffling problem of the wonderful widow who ap-
peared to be French, and yet was not French. His
brain by itself could not have conceived of a means,
but Madame assisted to stimulate its imagination as
she had done the beating of his heart. "It was
wrong of you, mon ami," she said, in gentle reproof,
"to select a room upon the same floor as mine, it
was a proceeding bold and not a little indelicate,
which might have compromised my precious reputa-
tion had I not been secure in the honour of my poor
lost Captain Guilbert." Rust protested that he had
left the choice of rooms entirely to the lady of the
bureau, but Madame's smile showed that she was
wholly sceptical. "I speak frankly to you," said
she, " so that there may be no longer in your mind
any thought that I am a woman of light conduct.
I have come here, driven by your sad pleadings, to
give you of my companionship, and my heart would
be desolated if I thought that you still misjudged
me." The beautiful voice shook, and I do not doubt
that the violet eyes, glistening with pumped-up
* tears, were raised to Rust's face. I, her friend,
know that she can feel deeply, and I can distinguish
that which she simulates from that which moves her,
but the poor creature Rust was in her hands the
most helpless and deluded of victims.
So the day passed. They lunched together and
dined together. In the intervals they walked upon
the sunny front, for the weather was perfect and the
sun shone as it only shines at Brighton. Madame,
I am quite sure, did not sit upon the sand. It
appears also that they visited a succession of picture
houses. Madame declares that she is fascinated by
this form of entertainment; the variety and rapid
movement delight her—as I admit they do my dull
12


AT BRIGHTON
171
always suffered when sleeping at hotels, forbade
the locking of her door. "I am not afraid to die,"
said she, "for what have I to bind me to life now that
I can never visit the spot where repose the shattered
fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But
to be burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from
me by a locked door! I shrink from so terrible a fate."
Subtlety, she had discovered, was thrown away
upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to
be brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick
head the tempting fact that nothing interposed
during the hours of darkness between his eager
hands and the paper which she had taught him to
covet. If she awoke and mistook his motives—if
she thought that he had ventured into her room
with designs upon her honour—Rust felt sure that
her kind heart would forgive him, by breakfast-
time, though she would certainly dismiss him from
her bedside with the most haughty of reproaches.
If he could not find some other way before they
separated for the night, he had almost decided to
essay the venture. She slept very soundly, said
Madame; she had not awakened in her appartement
in Paris upon one night when a bomb from a Prus-
sian aeroplane had exploded within two hundred
yards of her house. Another way was still possible,
and Rust, while he was dressing for dinner, deter-
mined to try it; it was a way, too, which thrilled
him with pleasurable anticipation.
At dinner Madame declined champagne, which
she said was a poor, feeble drink. Let them for once
share a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, a royal wine,
the Wine of Courage. The patron brought them the
bottle himself, and lamented that they would not
indulge themselves in a second. Madame had no


AT BRIGHTON
173
pressed it kindly for a moment, and then, still holding
it, removed his arm from her shoulder to her waist.
"Your coat sleeve scratches my shoulder," she mur-
mured. Rust, who had instantly released the paper
when Madame took his hand, never again got an
opportunity of touching it, for she kept her arm
pressed over his during the whole time that they
sat together. "I gave him the chance," explained
Madame to me, " and it worked beautifully. But
once was enough. From that moment I became
really suspicious of Rust. Before I had only been
puzzled. What he was I could not guess, but I was
dead set on finding out before the night was over.
Till then I had allowed only little freedoms, but when
I rose to go into the hotel and he bent over me I
let him kiss me-on my Hps. It was a severe dis-
appointment, that kiss," added Madame contem-
platively.
"Spare me the loathsome details," said I crossly.
When at last Madame Gilbert went to her room
she was smiling gaily and showing no signs of
fatigue at the tiresome exercises of the day. Though
it was approaching midnight the faithful Marie was
waiting to assist her toilet. "Ah, madame," sighed
Marie in her frank Parisienne fashion, " le Capitaine
is so beautiful and devoted. He regards you as one
who would devour. I marvel that you have the
heart to separate from him."
"Marie," said Madame, laughing, "you are a
naughty girl, a corrupter of my youthful morals. I
am afraid that le bon Capitaine must go hungry.
For "and then she pranced off upon that weari-
some old story about the blown-up Territorial bore
of le Grand Couronne\ Fidelity to the scattered
corpse of a husband—un mari assommant, mon


174
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
Dieu, pas un amant joyeux !—seemed to Marie the
most wasted of emotions. She, in common with
all the other Frenchmen and women in the hotel, was
an ardent partisan of Captain Rouille.
"If my bell rings in the night, come quickly,
Marie," said Madame, as she dismissed the girl. "I
shall need you d la grande vitesse."
Madame slipped the seductive paper and some-
thing else under her pillow, saw that the electric
bell-push and the light switch were close to her hand
upon the bedside table, and snuggled down con-
tentedly. "The trap is set and baited," she mur-
mured; "I hope that the bird will not keep me
waiting."
An hour passed slowly. Rust has told me little
of his feelings, but admitted that he was in the
"devil of a funk." He had determined to make a
daring shot at the paper and the solution of
Madame's identity, but he shivered at the prospect
of her wrath should she awake and catch him in the
act. "She would have thought the worst of me,
and, like you, Copplestone, I cherish her beautiful
friendship as the most precious of privileges. On
my honour I was only after the paper." Madame
found the waiting time very tedious, but I am sure
that her pulse did not quicken by a beat. She has
a wonderful nerve.
At one o'clock, when the hotel was very quiet,
and the boot-cleaner had made his round of collec-
tion, Madame heard the handle of her door move
and the door itself push slowly open. Through
her partly closed eyes she saw the momentary flash
of an electric torch with which Rust took his bearings,
and then she felt, rather than saw or heard, a figure
draw gently towards her bed. Her right hand was


AT BRIGHTON
175
under the pillow grasping that something, not the
paper, which she had laid there in readiness. Rust
approached, bent over her, and his fingers felt for
the pillow. They touched her hair, and she knew
that the moment for action had come. Out
stretched her arm, holding the pistol well clear of
his body, for she was loth to hurt him, and a sharp
report within a couple of feet of his side frightened
Rust more. thoroughly than had the hottest of
"crumps" in Flanders. He sprang away, and
darted for the door; but in an instant the lights
went up, and a loud, commanding voice—utterly
unlike Madame's soft musical social tones—called
to him to halt. "Halt!" cried Madame in English.
"Right about turn! 'Shun!" The familiar
words of command brought him round in prompt
obedience, and there before him he saw Madame
Gilbert sitting up in her bed, pointing a most busi-
ness-like automatic pistol straight for his heart.
Her hand held it true, without a quiver, and along
the sights glittered an eye remorseless as blue
steel. This was a woman wholly different from that
kindly yielding creature whom he had embraced
and kissed a couple of hours earlier!
"You will please stand quite still," said Madame,
speaking the slightly tinged Irish-English of her
birth, "for if I shoot, le Capitaine Rouille will be no
more. See! Upon my dressing-table behind you
is a small vase supporting a rose. I will cut off its
stem." She quickly moved the pistol, and fired.
"You may turn round." He obeyed, and saw that
the vase was unbroken, but that the rose, cut off
at the stem, lay upon the dressing-table. Behind
it appeared a bullet-hole in the plaster of the wall.
Madame flicked the spent cartridge off her coun-
r


176 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
terpane, where it had fallen upon ejection, and
resumed. "I have rung the bell, and in a moment
there will be a most interested audience. You will
then please explain what brings you to my bedroom."
He had faced round towards her again, and his
poor mind was a blank. The situation was too big
for him. He had fallen into a trap, but why it had
been set he could not guess. Who was this calmly
capable, straight-shooting widow who, with the copper
hair falling over her shoulders and streaming down
the front of her dainty nightdress, appeared in
action even more lovely than in repose?
The first to arrive was Marie, then followed another
femme de chambre, then came the night porter, then
the boot-collector, last, with eyes opened wide at
the surprising spectacle of a beautiful young woman
receiving her lover at the point of a pistol, appeared
monsieur le patron himself. They clustered in a
group by the door. "I think," said Madame
serenely, " that we have enough. Marie, the house
is full; shut the door and lock it." The order was
obeyed. "Now," went on the commanding voice
from the bed, using French for the effective shutting
out of the English boot-cleaner and night porter,
"if you men will turn your backs, and Marie will
hand me my dressing-gown, I will prepare myself
for the examination of Monsieur le Capitaine Rouille.
It is not seemly that a court of inquiry should be
conducted in a nightdress."
The men turned round, or were pushed round.
Marie—gasping with wonder at the whole incredible
business, so unlike that which she had suggested—
brought the silk dressing-gown and robed Madame,
who skipped out of bed for the purpose. Then the
fair juge d"instruction, wrapped to the neck in blue


AT BRIGHTON
177
silk, and looking prettier than ever, propped herself
upon the pillows and opened the court.
"Captain Rouille," ordered she in French,
"please tell these others why you came to my bed-
room."
I regret to record that Marie and the other girl
looked towards one another and sniggered. The
patron lifted up his hands in amazement. Mon
Dieu, what a question! The two English servants
did not understand French.
Rust said nothing. Madame, who had observed
the excusable misunderstanding of her French
audience, condescended to explain. "I am sure,"
she said, "that Captain Rouille will not suggest
that his visit was designed to attack my honour."
"Quelle dame extraordinaire!" moaned the
patron. "C'est incroyable le sangfroid de celle-ld."
"Of course not," cried Rust, speaking for the
first time. "Never would I have dared to think of
such a thing. Madame Gilbert is a lady of the
highest virtue. It was not to compromise her that
I entered her room."
"The man," groaned the patron, "is no less
extraordinary than the woman. Why in God's name
this pistol, this scene so public! They are lovers,
beyond doubt, yet they spring upon my hotel this
scene of the most scandalous. It is not the way
of France; I do not understand such goings on."
Madame drew a paper from her bed, and held it
up. "Was it for this that you came?"
"Yes," said Rust, " for that and that only."
"Un billet doux," said the patron, playing without
design the part of a bewildered chorus. '' Why should
not madame have given it to him if she wished to
write that which she was too modest to say?"


178 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
"Why did you want it?"
"What more natural," cried the patron, "than
that the brave captain should be eager to read the
sweet confession of your love?" Madame missed
not a word which dribbled from the lips of the poor,
puzzled patron, who contributed the comic sauce
which titillated her humorous palate. The patron
to her was a sheer joy.
"Why did you want it?" repeated Madame
sternly.
"Because," said Rust, "you said that it con-
tained the most important of secrets."
"What have you to do with secrets which con-
cern the fate of nations at war?"
"Nations! War!" muttered the patron. "What
words are these to find upon the lips of lovers?
By now they should, had they not both been
quite mad, have forgotten war in their mutual
embraces."
Rust was silent, considering what he should say.
He had not the wit to invent a plausible story, and to
such men there is only one safe rule—when in doubt,
tell the truth. He told the truth.
"I wanted that paper because I am a member
of the Secret Service."
"Of Germany?" snapped Madame, flashing
violet lightning from her eyes. Sensation! The
two French women broke into screams of rage, dread-
ful to hear; the patron raised his clenched hands,
and roared like a furious beast. Rust, a brave man,
shrank for a long, startled moment. His flesh
quivered, as if it felt fierce French nails fasten
into it. He saw the blood-lust flame in the eyes
which searched his face. He trembled, but spoke
up firmly,


AT BRIGHTON
179
"No. The Secret Service of England."
"Liar!" roared the patron. "Menteur! Espion I
Foul seducer of a desolate veuve de France I
Die, traitor! Madame, raise your pistol; shoot
—shoot instantly for the honour of France!"
The man, a fat, comfortable bourgeois, was trans-
figured with frightful, murderous rage. He had
become a figure almost heroic.
But Madame did not shoot. In ten seconds her
swift brain had recalled the whole series of incidents
during her commerce with Rust; she penetrated to
the heart of the mystery, and immediately became
convinced that he spoke the truth.
"No," said she. "Monsieur le patron and you,
mes demoiselles, cease your cries. You do the brave
Capitaine Rouille a very grave injustice for which you
must pray his forgiveness sur-le*champ. He is a
soldier of France, and of our noble Allies, the
English. He is an officer of the English Secret
Service. The mistake was mine, for which, mon
capitaine, I implore your pardon."
She lay back in her bed, and the laughter poured
out of her in one unbroken flood. She laughed
until she became weak as a baby, for the idiotic
comedy which they two had played—at the expense
of the British Treasury—was beyond any other
means of expression. Rust, who began to grasp
something of the truth, also broke into a laugh,
and the amusement of the principals brought instant
conviction to the audience. The repentance of
those who had thirsted for Rust's blood a moment
since was very pleasant to witness. The women
begged permission to kiss his brave hands, which
had slain the foul Boches, and the patron cast his
burly person upon Rust's pyjama-clad bosom and


i8o THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
saluted him on both cheeks. He had a stiff, hard
beard!
"And now," cried the patron, "this scene, so
deplorable and scandalous, is happily ended. Our
beautiful Madame and the brave captain, their mis-
takes and misunderstandings removed, are again
lovers of the fondest. Let us go, my friends, and
leave them to forgive one another as they will
desire to do in decent privacy. A lions, allons, vite I''
He drove away the boot-collector and the night
porter, who had not understood one word of the
quick French which had been spoken. They ex-
plained the scene satisfactorily to themselves by the
one word, " French." The women would also have
gone if Madame, who was still laughing, had not
hastily recalled Marie.
"Marie," she whispered, spluttering with cheerful
impropriety, " lead that captain away and lock him
into his room or my reputation is gone for ever.
Take Rouille away, and then leave me, for I want
to laugh and then to sleep."
But Rust, blushing deeply at the preposterous
closing of the scene, had sneaked quietly out of the
room.
* * *
They met at breakfast without embarrassment.
At least Madame was perfectly tranquil; I cannot
answer so surely for Rust. In the eyes of the
little world of the hotel nothing had been changed.
They retained their assumed characters as a Widow
and Soldier of France, who consorted with the free-
dom of old friends.
"So," said Madame, when all had been explained,
"you were put on by our dear, fiery Froissart, and I


AT BRIGHTON
181
by the dear, secretive Dawson. We blundered up
against one another, and the rest followed naturally.
You were such an one as I looked for, and I was
of the kind pictured by the imaginative Froissart.
It has all been most amusing, especially when one
reflects that the English Government has paid for
all our delightful lunches, teas, dinners, and motor
runs. I doubt, though, whether we can with easy
consciences send in the bill for this week-end."
"No. We will divide the cost between ourselves,
for I am sure that you will refuse to be my guest.
All I ask is that you do not cut our holiday the
shorter on account of what has passed."
"Not by an hour," replied Madame heartily. "I
like you, Captain Rust; we will enjoy ourselves
to-day as colleagues en vacance, and to-morrow we
will report at headquarters. We will leave Dawson
and Froissart to sort out the responsibility for the
whole comedy. It has been a most pleasing experi-
ence. Never shall I forget that scene of last night
and the bewilderment of the poor patron. His
comments were a delight, and the conclusion was so
purely French in its artless conception that I felt
for your innocent blushes."
"The patron was the limit," muttered Rust,
flushing deeply.
"He was. And yet no one could convince him
that the reconciliation so desired by him was not the
most natural and decorous for us. I am still sore
with excessive laughter. Again and again in the
night I woke up and simply bellowed."
The Sunday was again a very fine day, and Rust
speaks of it still with enthusiasm. Madame revealed
herself to him, no longer as the seductive siren, but
as a true-hearted colleague and helper. He saw her


182 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
not only as a beautiful and most compelling fascina-
tor, before whom he had grovelled, but as a big-
brained and big-souled friend. "She is the only
woman whom I have ever met with whom I would
go tiger-shooting," said Rust to me. I will accept
that one sentence as his considered verdict; no
greater tribute could be paid by a man to a
woman.
At first he did not fully grasp that the Madame
of that Sunday, the real Madame, was wholly
different from the one he had known before. As
they sat together upon the cliffs towards Rotting-
dean, he slipped his arm about her waist. Gently,
but very decidedly, she removed it. "No, mon
ami," said she. "All that has passed with the
necessity for its exercise. I do not play with my
friends."
"Thank you," replied he—it was the brightest
speech which Madame has recorded of him. There
is hope that Rust will, with years and experience,
develop in intelligence.
When Madame returned to London on the
Monday, she sought an audience of Chief Inspector
Dawson, and told the whole story. He was not
pleased, but handsomely conceded that she had
carried out her duties with skill and enterprise.
"The farce was not your fault," said he; "it was
entirely due to that French ass Froissart, who has
no right to play games of his own without consult-
ing me. I will make a protest to the Chief."
"Don't do that," urged Madame. "Froissart is
rather a dear, and you know that the fault was
partly yours, for not taking him into your con-
fidence. I have determined to cultivate Froissart,
and shall endeavour to persuade him that your


AT BRIGHTON 183
feminine assistants are not all of microscopic intelli-
gence and of repulsive appearance."
"You will succeed," said Dawson handsomely.
Froissart, to whom Rust reported, gleaned some
consolation from the failure of his agent. "This
wonder of a woman, of whom I must instantly make
the honourable acquaintance, has saved the detested
Dawson from the deeps of humiliation. But we have
scored off him most surely. He has shown himself
to be a blundering, conceited English pig, and I will
protest to the Chief that never again must he keep
me in ignorance of his projects. I shall laugh at
him; all our people here will laugh. I shall be
revenged. Conspuez Dawson!"
"Don't be too hard on Dawson," urged Rust.
"Madame Gilbert thinks a lot of him, and would
be pained if he suffered discredit through any fault
of hers."
"Fault!" shouted the gallant Froissart. "La
belle Madame is sans faute, peerless, a prodigy of
skill and discretion! She is superb. If she im-
plores me to spare the man Dawson, then I will
consent, though my heart is rent in fragments. As
for you, mon ami, I fear that in her hands you were
not a figure of admiration. She twisted you about
her pretty fingers like a skein of wool. I do not
think that you are, what you call, cut out for the
Secret Service."
"That is quite my own opinion," assented he
gloomily.


CHAPTER |XII
DAWSON PRESCRIBES
The mind of Dawson has the queerest limitations.
He is entirely free from any sense of proportion. If
I wrote of those incidents which he pressed upon
me, this book would be intolerably dull. He sees no
interest in any episode which is not Dawson,
Dawson, all the time. The emotion which was
aroused in the hearts of Cary and myself by Tre-
hayne's letter caused Dawson no small anxiety.
He feared lest in rendering this episode I should
turn the limelight upon Trehayne and leave the
private of Marines in the shadows. Which is pre-
cisely what I have done. From his " sick bed " he
sent me a letter explaining that his own honourable
weakness of sympathy with an enemy spy was
physical, not moral—a reprehensible failing induced
by lack of sleep. He laboured to convince me that
the spirit of Dawson in the full flush of health was of
a frightfulness wholly Prussian in its logical com-
pleteness. But I smiled, wenl! my own way, and
Dawson, when he comes to read this book, can swear
as loudly as he pleases.
If I had depended only upon Dawson, I should
never have secured the details of the story which I
am about to write. It was Froissart who first put
187


188' THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
me upon the track of it during one of those visits
which I paid to him when I was investigating
I'affaire Rust. Froissart, in imaginative insight, is
as much superior to Dawson as the average French-
man is to the average Englishman. But in execu-
tion he admits sorrowfully that he cannot hold a
candle to his brutal secretive English chief. "I
have genius," exclaimed Froissart, "of which the
sacred dog Dawson has not a particle. I know not
whence come his ideas, the most penetrative. It
cannot be from son esprit of which he has none;
his brain reposes, without doubt, in his stomach.
Yet, ma foi, that man whom I detest and to whom
I am a colleague most loyal, is of a practical in-
genuity most wonderful. Did you ever learn how
he hid the great cruisers Intrepid and Terrific from
the watching eyes of the Boche, and won, here in
England, a glorious victory for the English Navy,
eight thousand miles away? I was with him, and
at the end, failing uponhis bosomin generous admira-
tion, I kissed him on both cheeks. And what was
my reward? It was to receive a short-arm blow
upon the diaphragm. That man of mud took my
wind, as he called it, and I was laid gasping upon
the floor. It was in this fashion that he repulsed
me—me a Count of I'ancien regime. I could have
his blood."
I soothed Froissart, and extracted enough from
him in rapid French spasms—his idiomatic staccato
French is often beyond my understanding—to give
me a general idea of what Dawson had done.
Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson
himself—who, for some reason, did not greatly value
the affair—tackling others who knew more than
they were always willing to tell, even to me. their


igo THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
the nerve ganglion of the English Navy, and here,
striding up and down, the man who could jab the
nerve-centre with his finger whenever he pleased.
He often pleased. Then he would gloat over the
pins as they skipped about the maps.
Chief Inspector Dawson was announced, and stood
to attention.
"Ha!" cried the First Lord, " so you are Daw-
son, the Master of Spies. We need you, Dawson;
the country needs you; / need you. You have a
great chance this day to show your quality, Dawson.
Those of whom I approve, I advance. They become
great men. Am I to approve of you?"
Dawson observed that he could not well say until
he learned what was wanted of him.
"Ha!" cried the First Lord again, " you are a
man of few words. I like those with me who do not
talk. When there is talking to be done—well, I
can do a little in that line myself. Among my in-
struments I demand silence."
Dawson said nothing. The First Lord struck a
bell; a servant in blue uniform appeared. "Will
you please tell his lordship that Chief Inspector
Dawson is here, and that I await his presence."
The man retired and presently returned. "His
lordship is in his room making out the orders for the
Fleet. He bids me say that he is quite at your
service."
The First Lord flushed, and glanced furtively at
Dawson, who stood at attention, stolid, silent, im-
movable. It would seem that he read nothing in
the message.
"The Mountain is old and stiff in his joints," re-
marked the First Lord playfully. "When he settles
into his chair, it would take a bomb to lift him out.


DAWSON PRESCRIBES
We are young and active; we must consider the in-
firmities of age. Mahomet will go to the Mountain,
and you will please to follow."
Mahomet, swinging his long coat-tails, strode out
of the room and down a passage, whence they
emerged into another room also set about with pin-
studded maps.
"Ha!" said the First Lord, "as you would not *
come to us, we have unbent our dignity and come to
you. This is Chief Inspector Dawson."
"So I supposed," growled the grizzled old man,
who sat at a big desk upon which was piled many
flimsies.* It was the great Lord Jacquetot, who for
all his French name was English of the English.
"Will you explain to Mr. Dawson what we want
of him or shall I?" inquired the First Lord.
Lord Jacquetot rose from his chair, showing nothing
of the infirmities of age. He approached Dawson,
looked over him keenly, and said, " You don't look
like a civilian policeman. Where have you served?"
Dawson explained that he had in former days
been a Red Marine.
"I thought as much," said Jacquetot. "There is
no mistaking the back and shoulders of them. Once
a Pongo, always a Pongo." He held out his hand,
which Dawson shook diffidently. An ex-private of
Marines does not often shake the hand of a First
Sea Lord.
Lord Jacquetot walked over to one of the maps
and beckoned to Dawson to follow. The First
Lord hovered in the background, ready to put in a
word at the first opportunity.
"There has been a serious naval disaster in the
South Seas," said Jacquetot, "and we must clean
up the mess, pretty damn quick. The news came


THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
yesterday. Orders were wired at once that two
battle-cruisers, the Intrepid and Terrific, should
be sent at full speed from Scotland to Devonport
to dock, coal, and complete with stores. To keep
them outside the enemy's observation, and to avoid
any risk of mines or submarines in the Irish Channel,
they have been sent far out round the west coast
of Ireland. Here they are; we get messages from
them every hour." He indicated two pins. Just
then a messenger entered and handed to the First
Sea Lord a wireless flimsy. Jacquetot read it,
slipped a scale along the map, took out the two
pins, and shifted them further south. "They are
going well," said he; "doing twenty-five knots.
They should be off Plymouth Sound by to-morrow
evening."
"It is a long way," put in Dawson, deeply inter-
ested. "Fifteen hundred miles."
"There or thereabouts. The coast lights are all
out, so that they will steer a bit wide. They should
do it in sixty hours."
"I gave the order within thirty minutes of getting
the news of the disaster," remarked the First Lord,
smacking his lips.
Jacquetot made no reply, though his eyes hardened
and his mouth drew into a stiff line. It was his
province to give Orders to the Fleet.
"Those battle-cruisers," went on Lord Jacquetot,
addressing Dawson, "will go into dock at Devon-
port as soon as they arrive. They will be there
forty-eight hours at least. They must be clean
ships before they go through the hot tropical water
if their speed is to be kept up. They have gun
power, but power without speed is useless for the
work which they have to do. After leaving England


DAWSON PRESCRIBES 193
it will be a month before the Squadron, of which
they are to form the chief part, will be concen-
trated in the South Seas. For two days at Devon-
port, and for four weeks while at sea, there must
be the completest secrecy if our plans are to succeed.
Without absolute secrecy we shall fail. The Board
of Admiralty is responsible for the sea, but not for
the land. We can make certain that no news of
the despatch of these two cruisers gets out at sea;
can you, Mr. Chief Inspector Dawson, undertake
that no news gets out on land—that no whisper of
their sailing reaches the enemy by means of his
spies on land?"
"It is a large order," said Dawson thoughtfully.
"It is a very large order," asserted Lord Jacque-
tot, frowning.
"But large or small, the thing must be done,"
broke in the First Lord. "If this news gets out,
and we fail to come up with the German Squadron
down south, the effect upon the public will be horrible.
The English people may even lose their perfect,
their sublime, faith in ME."
"They may lose their faith in the Navy," mut-
tered Jacquetot.
"It is the same thing," said the First Lord.
"Can you let me know more details, my lord?"
asked Dawson. "What is the programme? I
don't see at present how the arrival, docking, and
sailing of the battle-cruisers can possibly be kept
secret, but there may be a way if one could only
think of it."
"If the Intrepid and Terrific arrive according to
programme," said -Jacquetot, "they will not come
up the Sound till after dark. Then in the small
hours they will slip into dock, and no one but the


194 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
regular dockyard hands will know that they are
there. We will haul them out also in the middle
of the night, and they will be clear away by day-
break, forty-eight hours after arrival. Coal and
other stores are on the spot in plenty, and the
shells and cordite for the twelve-inch guns can
soon be got down from the Plymouth magazines.
The secrecy of the operation seems to me to
turn on whether we can trust the dockyard
hands."
Dawson shook his head. "I wouldn't plump on
that, my lord. There have been enemy agents
working in every dockyard in the kingdom for years
past, and we haven't spotted all of them. Still, we
have our own men working alongside of them—
Scotland Yard men engaged from among the ship-
building trades unions—accounting for every one,
so that no man can be away from his post without
our knowing and shadowing him. It is not easy to
get any information out of the country nowadays.
The secret wireless stories are all humbug. Wire-
less gives itself away at once. If one wants to get
news to the enemy, one has to carry it oneself, or
hire some one else to carry it. Most of that which
goes we allow to go for our own purposes. I am
pretty sure that no dockyard hand could get any-
thing away to Holland without our knowledge, so
that it doesn't matter whether they are trustworthy
or not so long as we're not fools enough to trust
them. Yoji may not know it, but I have my own
Yard men among your messengers here in this build-
ing, and among your clerks too."
"What!" cried the First Lord. "You don't
even trust the Admiralty!"
"Least of all," said Dawson [grimly. "If I was


DAWSON PRESCRIBES 195
head of the German Secret Service, I would have my
own man as your private secretary."
The First Lord sat down gasping. Jacquetot
nodded kindly to Dawson, and laughed in his grim
old way. "You are the man we want," said he.
"I am not thinking much of the dockyard hands,"
went on Dawson; "I can look after them. They're
all provided for. The danger is in the gossip of a
seaport town. I have lived in Portsmouth for years,
and Plymouth is just like it. You may take my
word for it that the arrival of the Terrific and
Intrepid in dock at Devonport will be known all
over the Three Towns half an hour after they get
there. Their mission will be discussed in every bar,
and it won't be difficult to make a pretty useful
guess. Here is a disaster in the South Seas—which
will be published all over the country by to-morrow
morning—and here are two of our fastest battle-
cruisers summoned in hot haste from Scotland to be
cleaned and loaded for a long voyage. Any child,
let alone a longshoreman, could put the two things
together. 'So the Intrepid and Terrific are off to
the South Seas to biff old Fritz in the eye.' That
is what they will say in the Three Towns where there
must be hundreds of men—British subjects, too,
the swine, and many of them natural-born—who
would take risks to shove the news through to
Holland if they could get enough dirty money for
it. Our worst spies are not German, you bet; they
are Irish and Scotch and Welsh and English. That's
where our difficulties come in. I am not afraid of
the dockyards, but the gossip of the Three Towns
gives me the creeps."
"Then what can we possibly do?" -wailed the
First Lord, who saw his prospect of a brilliant coup


DAWSON PRESCRIBES 197
the Intrepid and Terrific. So, before they arrive,
we must give the people of the Three Towns a real
tit-bit of excitement. Battle-cruisers come to dock
in Devonport quite often when they are damaged.
Two battle-cruisers which had been mined or sub-
marined, one towing the other, would be a pretty
picture in the Sound. It would set all the folk
talking for days, and no one would think that two
damaged cruisers had anything to do with the
South Seas. Everybody would say, 'What cruel
luck! If the Terrific and Intrepid, hadn't got blown
up they would be just right and handy to send
down south. As it is 'And then the German
agents would somehow get the news to Holland—
we would help them all we could in a quiet way—
that the Intrepid, and Terrific, two fast battle-
cruisers, had been nearly lost, and were being
patched up at Devonport. The Germans, hearing
the glorious news, would hug themselves and say
that now was the time for the High Seas Fleet to
come out and smash Jellicoe. The last thing in
their minds would be any concentration in the
south against their own Pacific Squadron. That's
how I apply my general principles to this case.
Meanwhile, of course, the Terrific and Intrepid, well
and sound, would be racing away down to the South
Seas and no one in the Three Towns—except the
dockyard hands, whom we would look after—and
no one at all in Germany, would have a glimmer of
the real truth."
While Dawson was thinking aloud in this rather
halting, stumbling way, the First Lord and his chief
naval colleague were looking hard at one another.
The politician, with his quick House-of-Commons
wits, jumped to the idea before his slower thinking


DAWSON PRESCRIBES
199
quick decision. Mr. Dawson's suggestion—I should,
perhaps, rather say my own suggestion—shall be
laid before the Board at once."
Though the stiff mind of Lord Jacquetot was not
very quick to take in a new idea, no man alive was
better equipped for practically working out a
naval scheme. While the First Lord was assuming
that sorely damaged battle-cruisers, or vessels
which could be passed off in place of them, needed
but his summons to spring from the deeps, Jacquetot
had pressed a bell and ordered a messenger to
request the immediate presence of the Fourth Sea
Lord, within whose province were the whole art and
mystery of ship construction. Upon the appearance
of this officer the plan was gone over anew, and he
was asked whence and within what time he could
produce two presentable dummies to do duty in the
Sound for the entertainment of the population of
Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse. There were,
said he, two if not three at Portsmouth, constructed
out of old cargo tramp hulls for the mystification of
the enemy. They had already done duty as newly
completed battleships, but with a little alteration
to the canvas of their funnels, the lath and plaster
of their turrets and conning towers and the wood of
their guns, they might be made into perfect likenesses
—at a distance—of the. Intrepid and Terrific. The
ships' carpenters, he explained, could make the
changes while the dummies were coming round to
Plymouth. Seated at the desk of Lord Jacquetot
he wrote the necessary orders in code, his Chief
signed them, and they were put at once on the
wires for Portsmouth. The sea-cocks, said the Fourth
Lord, would be opened twenty miles from land so
that the "Intrepid" might come in sadly down by


CHAPTER XIII
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
"Every man to his trade," said Dawson. "I didn't
go into the difficulties of our job to those high folks
at the Admiralty, but they are not at all small.
You have a head on you, Froissart, though it has
the misfortune to be French; set it going on double
shifts."
The two men were sitting in a specially reserved
first-class compartment in the Paddington-Plymouth
express; as companions they were hopelessly un-
congenial, yet as colleagues formed a strong com-
bination in which the qualities of the one served to
neutralise the defects of the other. Dawson, in
spite of his love for the Defence of the Realm Regu-
lations, was still sometimes unconsciously hampered
by an ingrained respect for the ordinary law and
the rights of civilians; Froissart, like all French
detective officers, held the law in contempt, and
was by nature and training utterly lawless. The
more reputable a suspect, the more remorseless was
his pursuit. They were, professionally, a terri-
ble pair who could have been passed through a
hair sieve without leaving behind a grain of moral
scruple.
14 201


202
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
Froissart, when he would be at the trouble, under-
stood and spoke English quite well, though with me
he used nothing but the raciest of boulevard French.
"My friend," said he, "your promise to those
Ministers of Marine was rash; for, unless there is
the most perfect execution of your scheme and the
most sleepless watching of those whom you call
dockyard hands—ceux qui travaillent dans les chan-
tiers, n'est-ce pas ?—the sailing of these grands
croiseurs will be told to Germany. There are too
many who will know. We are upon une folle entre-
prise—a chase of the wild goose."
"You do not know my system if you think that,"
remarked Dawson, frowning.
"And if I do not, of whom is the fault?" in-
quired Froissart blandly; "for, my faith, you never
tell what you would be doing."
"A secret," said Dawson sententiously, "is a
secret when known to one only. If two know of it
there is grave danger. If three, one might as well
shout it from the housetops. Therefore I keep my
own counsel."
"That is just what I said," cried Froissart tri-
umphantly. "If the secret of these grands crois-
eurs is known to one hundred, two hundred, le bon
Dieu knows how many hundreds of dockyard
hands, one might as well print it in these dull
English journaux. You attempt the impossible,
mon ami."
"They are Englishmen," proclaimed Dawson,
who felt compelled to uphold the character of his
countrymen in the presence of a foreigner. "They
are patriots. Not a man of them would sell his
country."
"I would not bank on their patriotism, my friend,


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 205
in God's name were two battle-cruisers doing in the
mine-strewn Channel when their proper place was
in one of the safe eyries overlooking the North Sea?
A plausible explanation was offered. The two
battle-cruisers had been coming to Plymouth to
take in stores that they might speed away south to
avenge those other two cruisers sunk by the Ger-
mans as had been told in the morning's papers. If
this were indeed true, the news was of the worst;
England's prestige afloat was gone. She could not
spare two other whole battle-cruisers to proceed
upon a mission of vengeance to the South Seas while
the Germans' Battle Squadrons in the North Sea
ports were still undefeated. Meanwhile the
Germans far away to the south could do what they
pleased; they could sink and burn our merchant
steamers at will. The command of the Pacific had
passed from England to Germany, and the White
Ensign hung draggled and shamed for all the world
to sneer at. The Three Towns almost forgot their
personal grief for drowned friends in their horror
at the disgrace which had come to their own sacred
Service.
It was still light, though late in the afternoon,
when the anxious watchers upon the Hoe made out,
beyond Drake's Island, two big ships coming in
round the western end of the breakwater. Though
deep in the water they towered above their escort
of destroyers and fast patrol boats. The leading
ship was listing badly, her tripod mast with its
spotting top hung far over to port, and she was
towing stern first a sister ship whose bows
were almost hidden under water. The Three
Towns, which can recognise the outlines of warships
afar off, rapidly pronounced judgment. "That's


206 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
the Intrepid," they declared, "and the one she's
towing is a battle-cruiser of the same class—the
Terrific or Tremendous. They're both badly holed."
"Gawd A'mighty," cried a grizzled longshoreman,
who might have sailed with Drake or Hawkins—
as no doubt his forbears had done—" look to the
list of un! And thicky with her bows down under,
being towed by the stern to keep her from swamping
entire. If it worn't for them bulk'eads un wouldn't
never have made the Sound." It was plain to
those who had glasses turned on the damaged ships
that they were drawing far too much water to be
brought into the Hamoaze and over the sill of the
dry dock at Devonport, so that no one felt surprise
when the battle-cruisers were seen to pull out of the
deep fairway and make towards the shore. The
purpose was plain to read. They were to be put
aground under Mount Edgcumbe, patched up, and
pumped dry, and then would go into dock for repairs.
It was a job of weeks, and during all that time the
Fleet would be short of two battle-cruisers which
might have swept the South Seas clear of the German
Ensign. It was cruel luck, and the Three Towns
had enough to talk of to keep them occupied for
many days. Presently more news came, authentic
news, and passed rapidly from mouth to mouth.
The vessels were the Intrepid, the flagship of Admiral
Stocky, and her sister the Terrific, a pair of fast
Dreadnought cruisers. They had, as was surmised,
been speeding down from Scotland to dock at
Plymouth on their way to clean up the mess made
in the far South. They had come safely through
the Irish Sea and round the Land's End, but when
near their journey's end off Fowey they had run
into a patch of mines laid by German submarines.


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 207
The Terrific had had her bow plates ripped into
slivers of ragged steel, and the three fore compart-
ments flooded. The Intrepid had picked up the
wire of a twin mine, got caught badly on the port
side, but had luckily escaped to starboard. She had
taken her crippled sister in tow, and brought her
in safely. Both ships could easily be repaired, but
it would take time. The voyage to the South Seas
was off. Nothing could have been more convincing
than the story which quickly got about; the ships
had been seen and recognised by the Three Towns—
there was no concealment and no mystery. For
once the Silent Navy appeared to be talkative. The
hearts of German agents in the Towns swelled with
pride and joy. Here was convincing proof of the
kindly hand of the Prussian Gott. If the great
news could be carried through to the Kaiser and
von Tirpitz, there would be much ringing of church
bells in the Fatherland. But these English, since
the war began, had become very watchful, very
suspicious. The problem was: how to get the
glad news through.
* * *
It was two o'clock in the morning and very dark.
The big dry docks at Devonport were deserted except
for a few picked hands, not more than two score at
the outside, told off on night shift for special duty.
Against all workmen who had not been warned
for this duty the big gates would be closed for two
whole days. There were important jobs awaiting
completion, but they must wait. One hundred and
twenty men, working in three eightThour shifts per
day—forty at a time—could do all that was needed
to the Intrepid and Terrific, and not pne man was


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 209
potentate indeed. Ashore Dawson could face up
to the Lord Jacquetot himself; on board ship a
two-ring lieutenant was to him a god! He followed
the Commander, and was ushered into the Admiral's
presence. "What!" cried Stocky, stern in
manner always, but very kindly at heart towards
those whom he found to be true men. "A private of
Marines with plenary powers from the First Lord?
Take the papers off him and chuck the damned
comedian into the ditch. We have no time here for
the First Lord's humour." The Commander drew
near and whispered. "What! Authority endorsed
by Jacquetot? There is something queer about
this. Look here, my fine fellow, who the devil are
you? Are you a Marine, or a too clever German
spy, or what? Make haste. There is still enough
water left over the side to pitch you into without
breaking your dirty neck."
Dawson knew his man. He had served in the
same ship with Stocky when that officer had been a
lieutenant; he had waited upon him in the ward-
room. He had felt the rasp of his tongue in old
days. He approached, and without saying a word
handed the letters given him by the First Lord and
Jacquetot, adding his official card. The Admiral
read the papers slowly and came at last to the card.
Then his frowning brows softened, and he smiled.
It was the old smile of Lieutenant Stocky. "Why,
it's Dawson who was my servant in the old Olym-
pus; now Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. That
explains all. But why the hell, man, do you dress
up as a Marine?"
"Once a Marine, always a Marine," replied Daw-
son, who felt happier now that the Admiral had
recognised him. "I can't keep out of the uniform,


210 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
sir. Besides, it's very useful when I want to be
about the docks."
"My orders," said the Admiral, "are to dock,
clean, coal, and be off. I am expecting more detailed
instructions, but they have not yet come. These
letters say that you will explain the programme
here, and that you have been charged with full
responsibility for keeping our movements secret. I
am to give you all possible assistance. All right.
Go ahead. What do you want of us?"
Dawson rapidly told how the two dummy battle-
cruisers had come stumbling into the Sound in the
afternoon, and how the Three Towns believed that
the Intrepid and Terrific were at that moment lying
on the shoals out of service for weeks to come. "No
one must guess," he concluded, "that the real
Intrepid and Terrific are here safe in dock, that they
will go out two days hence in the middle of the night,
and dash away south to wipe Fritz's flag off the seas.
We have picked the dockyard hands with the greatest
care, and have them under watch like mice with cats
all about them. If a single one of your officers or
men goes out of the dock gates the game will be up
and I won't answer for the consequences. Every-
thing rests with you, sir. Will you give orders that
no one, no one, not even you yourself, shall leave
either of the battle-cruisers while they are in dock—
no one, not for a minute?"
The Admiral laughed, and the officers in his room
respectfully joined in. "So we have been mined
and are aground somewhere yonder on the mud
surrounded by sorrowing patrols. And the Three
Towns are dropping salt tears into their beer. It is
a fine game, Dawson. I didn't believe much in
Lord Jacquetot's dummies, but they've come in


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 211
darned useful this time. Are you going to keep
Plymouth and Devonport in the dumps for long?"
"Until you've done your work, sir," said Dawson,
gfl" So until then the Intrepid and Terrific will lie
crippled in the Sound for all the world to see and
for Fritz to believe. If this very bright scheme is
yours, Dawson, we will all drink your health down
south as soon as our work has been done. For
the credit will be yours rather than ours. I will
help you all I can; it is my duty and my very keen
desire. A man who can make so brilliant a plan
for confounding the enemy's spies is worth a statue
of gold. He is even worth the sacrifice of two days'
leave while one's ship is in dock. What do you
say, gentlemen?"
"I never thought," said the Flag Captain, " that I
would willingly spend two days shut up in a smelly
dock, but you may count me in, sir. I won't head
a mutiny when all leave is refused."
"You shall have your way, Dawson. All leave
stopped in both ships. Not a man is to go ashore
on any pretence, no matter what the excuse. The
mothers of the lower decks may all die—they always
do when a ship is in port—but not a man shall leave
to bury them. Give the orders in the Intrepid,
and ask the Captain of the Terrific to be so good as
to come aboard."
* * *
"So far, good," exclaimed Dawson when he got
back to his hotel and found Froissart sitting up for
him. "The ships are in and no one is to be allowed
ashore. I shall be in a fever till both of them are
away again. We are on very thin ice, Froissart.
It is lucky that the dockyard is on the Hamoaze.


212 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
out of sight even of most of Devonport, and far
away from Plymouth and Stonehouse. I have seen
all the foremen of the dockyard myself, told them
the whole trick which we are playing on the Huns,
and put them on their mettle to tackle their men.
They will pitch it fine and strong on the honour
and patriotism of complete silence, but not neglect
to throw in a hint of the Defence of the Realm Act
and penal servitude. Never threaten an English-
man, Froissart, but always let him know that behind
your fine honourable sentiments there is something
devilish nasty. Preach as loud as you can about
the beauty of virtue, but don't forget to chuck in
a description of the fiery Hell which awaits wrong-
doers. I don't depend much either on the senti-
ments or the hints of punishment. I've got every
man of that hundred and twenty on my string,
and if one of them asks leave, within the next
day or two, to go and bury his mother on the East
Coast, he shall go—but I shall go with him, and
he shall have a jolly little funeral of his own.
Every letter which they write will be read, every
telegram copied for me, every message by 'phone
taken down. They are on my string, Froissart—
every man."
"You do everything, Mr. Dawson," grumbled
Froissart. "Where do I come in?"
"You have helped me a lot already," replied
Dawson handsomely. "You being a foreigner
make me talk very simple and plain, and think out
my plans so that I can explain them to you. One
sees the weak points of a scheme when one has to
make it clear to a foreigner. You don't always
twig my meaning, Froissart, and sometimes your
remarks are a bit foolish; but you mean well, and,


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 213
for a Frenchman, are quite intelligent. I will say
that for you, Froissart—quite intelligent."
"Sucre, nom d'un chien "began Froissart
hotly; but Dawson paid no heed. He just went on
talking, and Froissart, realising that Dawson could
not understand his French, and that he himself
could not give words to his feelings in English,
relapsed into wrathful silence. Much as I respect
and admire Dawson, I should not care to be his
subordinate.
"We must keep the cinema show going nice and
lively for the Three Towns," went on Dawson. "A
big salvage steamer is coming down to-morrow to
give an air or verisimilitude to the proceedings.
Patrol boats will buzz about the Sound, and the
potentates, naval and civil, will gather from all
parts. The unfortunate wrecks out at Picklecombe
Point will be guarded so that no shore boat can get
within half a mile. They won't bear a very close
inspection. I hope that none of the guns will
break loose and float about the harbour. That
would be what you might call a blooming contre-
temps. I shall be pretty busy all the next two
days myself. Though I am a strict teetotaller, I
shall get into shore rig and spend my days in the
public bars. I must know what the Three Towns
are talking about, and whether any suspicion of the
truth gets wind. I don't think that it can; at
least, for some time. The stage management has
been too good. Later on there may be some wonder-
ment because none of the men from the Intrepid
and Terrific are allowed ashore. A lot of wives and
families must be around here, especially as the
Intrepid is a Plymouth ship. Of course it must be
given out that they are all needed to help with the


214
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
salvage operations, and no leave is allowed. You,
Froissart, might spend your time reading copies of
all telegrams sent out from the Towns. If any
German agent wants to get news of the damage to
the battle-cruisers over to Holland, he will prob-
ably travel up to the East Coast and send a wire
on ahead. That is what I hope for. You shall
then follow him up, and make smooth the path of
crime. Half our trouble will be lost unless we can
help the spoof news over to the Kaiser, bless
him. The job, at first, will be pretty dull for you,
Froissart, and not over-lively for me. I hate
pubs, yet for two days I must loaf about them,
pretending to drink. You can read the telegrams,
but you can't understand English well enough to
pick up the gossip of the bars. I must do that
myself."
"You have stopped all leave on the battle-cruisers
—the real ones, I mean—but what about the dock-
yard men," inquired Froissart. "Are they to be
allowed to go to their homes when they come off
their shifts?"
"I have thought of that and weighed both sides.
It will be safer to let them go home as usual. If we
locked them all up in the dockyard till the Intrepid
and Terrific were both safe away, there would be no
end of curiosity and gossip. What so very special,
people would ask, could be going on in the yard
that no one was allowed out for two days. I don't
want wives and families and neighbours to come
smelling round those dockyard gates. They might
see the spotting tops of the cruisers inside. Of
course there is a regular forest of masts and gantries
showing, and a couple of spotting tops more or
less might not be noticed. But my general idea is


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN «5
to concentrate attention on those dear oldjdummies
down at Picklecombe Point. They are the centre
of interest, the eye of the picture—the cynosure,
as a scholar would say. I am not a bad scholar
myself. I passed the seventh standard, and went
to school all the time I was in the Red Marines.
I was a sergeant, which takes a bit of doing.
But see here, Froissart," exclaimed Dawson, look-
ing at his watch, "it is five o'clock, and we must
get quick to bed so as to be bright and lively in
the morning."
Dawson carried out his programme. Though a
strict teetotaller, he passed hours at public houses,
especially in the evenings, listening to the talk of
the port. It was all about the disaster in the South
Seas, the heavy casualties suffered by the Three
Towns, and the rotten ill-luck of the avenging battle-
cruisers running upon the German mines. Not a
whisper could Dawson hear of suspicion that the
ships beached under Mount Edgcumbe were other
than the genuine article. The salvage steamer with
her big arc lights glowing through the darkness had
been the last artistic touch which brought complete
conviction. Gold-laced officers, including the Com-
mander-in-Chief himself, had been coming and
going all day; the acting of the Nary had been per-
fect. Dawson blessed the four bones of old Jacque-
tot, who, when he tackles a job, does it very thor-
oughly indeed. "I should not be surprised,"
thought he, " if the Mountain, as that young Jacka-
napes called him, came trotting down here himself
just to make the show complete." And sure enough
he did, accompanied by the Fourth Sea Lord who
had worked out all the convincing details. Dawson
was ordered to meet them in the Admiral's quarters


4i6 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
of the Intrepid. He went, looking a very different
person from the private of Marines of some thirty
hours earlier, and had the honour of being invited
to luncheon. That lunch was the one scene in the
comedy upon which he dwelt in telling the story to
me. "Lord Jacquetot," he said, "clinked glasses
with me and wished me the best of luck and success.
It was as much as he could do, he said, to keep the
First Lord from coming down and monkeying the
whole affair. Luckily there was a debate in Par-
liament that he wanted to figure in, and so couldn't
get away. Lord Jacquetot said that the First
Lord had grabbed the whole scheme as his very
own, and forgotten that I had any part in it. I
don't mind. The Secret Service never gets any
credit for anything. If it did, it wouldn't be Secret
very long."
"No credit," I remarked, "and not much cash, I
expect."
"Little enough, sir," replied Dawson. "I suppose
we do the job for the love of it. There's no sport
like it. Our real work never gets into the papers
or the story-books."
"Never?" I asked slily. "What about that
story of mine in The Cornhill Magazine, which you
still carry about next your heart?"
Dawson changed the subject. He never will
appreciate chaff.
At midnight of the day of the luncheon party the
Intrepid and Terrific, clean and fully loaded, cleared
out of dock and slipped off into the darkness attended
by their destroyer escort, whose duty it was to see
them safe round Ushant. Eight hours later Dawson
came down to breakfast and found that Froissart,
satisfied with his petit dejeuner of coffee and rolls,


THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 217
had already gone out. Dawson felt satisfied with
himself, and was confident now that his work in the
Three Towns had been well and truly done. The
rest could be left to the Navy, and to his Secret
Service agents. He sat down to a hearty meal, but
was not destined to finish it. .First came a messen-
ger from the Officer in charge of the Dockyard, who
handed over a sealed note and took a receipt for it.
Dawson broke the seal. "Dear Mr. Dawson," he
read, "You will be interested to learn that one of
the hands engaged upon the work we know of has
asked for three days' leave—that he may bury his
mother in Essex. She died, he says, at Burnham.
I await your views before granting the leave asked
for. The man has been in our service for sixteen
years, and bears the best of characters."
"Now what do I know of Burnham?" muttered
Dawson. "The name seems familiar." He rang
the bell, asked for an atlas, and studied carefully
the coast of Essex. Burnham stood upon the river
Crouch, which Dawson had heard of as a famous
resort for motor-boats. His eyes gleamed, and he
threw up his head, which had been bent over the map.
"The man shall have his leave," murmured he.
"But I don't think it will be his mother who is
buried."
Just at that moment in came Froissart, looking, as
Dawson at once remarked, merry and bright. "It
is no wonder," said he, "for see this telegram of
which I have just had a copy. It was spotted at
once at the Bureau, and the man who despatched it
has been shadowed by a police officer." The tele-
gram read, "Coming to-day by South-Western.
Meet me this evening at usual place." It was ad-
dressed to Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex.
15


218 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
Dawson picked up the note which he had received
and passed it to Froissart, who read it slowly. "The
same place!" cried he.
"Yes," said Dawson slowly, "the same place,
and a famous resort for motor-boats. We have not
finished yet, my friend, with the Intrepid and
Terrific."


CHAPTER XIV
A COFFIN AND AN OWL
Dawson laid the letter and the telegram upon his
breakfast-table, and bent his head over them. In a
few minutes he had weighed them up, sorted out
their relative significance, and spoke. "We have
here, Froissart, two distinct people. I am almost
sure of that. My man of the dockyard who wants
leave to bury his mother in Essex has not yet
received permission from his Chief. He would not
therefore be telegraphing about his train. He does
not know yet whether he will be permitted to go at
all. Your man is quite confident that his move-
ments are in no way restricted. As I read between
the lines I judge that my man, who knows the actual
truth about the docking and sailing of the' battle-
cruisers, wants to reach the East Coast, whence he
has means of transmitting the priceless news to
Germany. Your man is of one of the Towns; he
has seen the dummy cruisers ashore in the Sound;
he believes them to be genuine, and he also wants
to transmit the news to his paymasters in Germany.
He will be an ordinary German agent. The identity
of place whither both wish to go is partly a coinci-
dence, and partly explained by its excellence as a
319


A COFFIN AND AN OWL 221
before he boards the train, and then don't let him
out of your sight. Take two plain-clothes officers
with you. Run no unnecessary risks of being
spotted. You are rather easily recognisable with
those shining black eyes and black beard, but no
one here has seen you officially, and you should pass
unsuspected as a Scotland Yard man. Can I trust
you?"
"Mais certainement," said Froissart crossly
"This is simple police work which I have done a
thousand times. I could do it on my head."
"Your train leaves at 10.8; the South-Western
station. I will give you the letters at once, and then
you can start."
Within a quarter of an hour Dawson—his break-
fast forgotten—had given Froissart his letters, sent
a long telegram by special messenger to the Com-
mander-in-Chief for despatch in code to Jacquetot.
Not even to Dawson would the Admiralty entrust
its private cypher. Then, as soon as Froissart had
disappeared, he called up the Chief of the Dock-
yard on the telephone and arranged to come at once
to his office.
"I had given the easy job to Froissart," he ex-
plained to me long afterwards. "It was, as he called
it, simple police work. He had, without arousing
suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just
as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the
late-lamented Hagan, and escorted him across in
the mail-boat. We have helped false news over to
the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport.
My job was something much more tricky. I had
to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the
dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the
very last minute, but to make dead certain of stop-


A COFFIN AND AN OWL 223
and holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must
have wasted the good toil of years. I can't imagine
any one less likely to take German gold than this
man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your
bonnet, Dawson? To a police officer every one
is a probable criminal, but some of us now and then
are passably honest. I will bet my commission
that Maynard is honest."
Dawson sniffed. "The honest men, with the
excellent characters and the virtuous wives, are
always the most dangerous because least likely to
arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard
hasn't a second establishment hidden away some-
where in the Three Towns? The upper and
middle classes have no monopoly in illicit love
affairs. Their working class betters do a bit that
way too."
"All right. Have it your own way. We will
assume for the sake of security that Maynard is a
spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants
leave to bury, and that he has sold his country
for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth.
The point is: what am I to do? Shall I grant
leave?"
"Yes," said Dawson, "and do it handsomely.
Give him four days and run the sympathetic stunt.
Offer him a Service pass by the Great Western. Say
how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh.
Have him up now, and put me somewhere close so ^
that I can take a good look at the swine when he
comes in and when he goes out."
The Chief of the Dockyard shrugged his shoulders,
placed Dawson in an adjoining room, and sum-
moned Maynard from the yard. The man, who
was dressed in the awful dead black of his class


224 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
when a funeral is in prospect, came up, and
Dawson got a full sight of him. Maynard was
about thirty-five, well set up—.for he had served
in the Territorials—and looked what he was, a
first-rate workman of the best type. Even Daw-
son, who trusted no one, was slightly shaken.
"I have never seen a man who looked less like
a spy," muttered he; "but then, those always
make the most dangerous of spies. Why has he
a mother in Essex, and why has she died just now?
Real mothers don't do these things; they've more
sense."
Maynard received his third-class pass, respect-
fully thanked his Officer for his kindly expressed
sympathy—which in his case was quite genuine—
and disappeared. Dawson jumped into the room
again to take a word of farewell. "I should know
him anywhere," he cried. "I am going by the
same train in the same carriage. Good-bye."
Maynard reached the Great Western station in
good time, and found a carriage which was not over-
crowded. He was carrying a small handbag. At
the last moment before the train started a pros-
perous-looking passenger, with " commercial gentle-
men " written all over him, stepped into the same
compartment and seated himself in a vacant seat
opposite the bereaved workman. It was Dawson
in one of his favourite roles. "There is nothing
less like a detective," he would say, " than a middle-
aged commercial traveller. They are such genial,
unsuspicious, open-handed folk. This comes of
wandering about the country at other people's
expense."
The 10.15 fast express from the Three Towns to
Paddington is an excellent one, and the journey


A COFFIN AND AN OWL 229
am afraid that his temper got the better of him,
and as the night drew on, unsolaced by a word
from Froissart, and unrelieved by any literature
more engrossing than old railway time-tables and
hotel advertisements, he consigned to the Bottom-
less Pit the Chief of the Devonport Dockyard, the
disgustingly virtuous and unenterprising Maynard,
and even the harmless soul of his lately buried
mother. Dawson in a royal rage is no pleasant
spectacle.
It had gone half-past eleven before Froissart
came, a boisterous, triumphant Froissart, bragging
of his skill and his success in the manner of a born
Gascon.
"It was tremendous, mon ami," roared Froissart/
unchecked by Dawson's scowls. "I have done the
blooming trick: the boat has gone to Holland,
and the filthy spy is in the strong lock-up. My
vigilance, my astuteness, my resource unfathom-
able, my flair, my soul of an artist, my patience in-
exhaustible, my address so firm and yet so delicate,
my mastery of the minds of those others less gifted,
my"
"Oh, stow it!" roared Dawson.
"Unfailing insight, mon esprit frangais, my
genius for the service of police, my unshakable
courage and elan, have had their just and inevitable
reward. The boat with the message so false has
gone to Holland for the German Kaiser to gloat
over, and the filthy spy is in the safe lock-up. I
took him with my own hands—I, le Comte de Frois-
sart, I bemired my hands by contact with his foul
carcase. The boat it flew down the river; ma foi,
like a flash of the lightning, going they said thirty
knots, presque cinquante kilometres par heure. The


A COFFIN AND AN OWL
231
my friend Dawson, the true histoire of my exploits
so tremendous and unapproachable. I reached the
station at Plymouth at ten hours, my spy was upon
the platform. I knew him, for those who had kept
him under watch had informed me of him. I had
with me two police officers en bourgeois, what you
call plain clothes, and I distributed them with the
acumen of a strategist. It was un train a couloir.
The spy disposed himself in a compartment. I
placed one of my officers in the same compartment
with him, the other in the compartment contiguie
towards the engine, myself in that d derrihre. He
was thus the meat in our sandwich. If he passed
into the corridor and walked this way or that he
was seen by me or by my man in advance; all his
movements while within his own compartment were
supervised every moment. So we travelled. He
did himself well that spy so atrocious. He partook
of his dejeuner in the buffet du train, and we all three
took our dejeuner there also. That was the last
meal of which I ate before this my supper here.
The journey was without incident, but when he
arrived at Waterloo the trouble began. He was not
taking risks, that spy. He knew not that he was
under watch, but he took not risks. He began to
perform a voyage designed to throw any man,
except one of the vigilance and resource of Froissart,
completely off his track. I was not learned in your
Metropolitain before this day, but now I know your
Tubes as if a map of them were printed in colours
upon my hand. At Waterloo that spy, so astute,
burrowed into the earth and entered a train of the
railway called Bakerloo, in which he journeyed to
Golders Green. Then he crossed a quai and
returned to the town called Camden. Again he


232 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
descended, passed through tunnels, and emerging
upon another quai proceeded to Highgate. All the
while we three followed, not close, but so that he
never escaped from under our eyes. At Highgate
he turned about and returned to Tottenham Court
Road. Thence he departed by another line to the
Bank, and, rising in an ascenseur, emerged upon the
pavements of your City. He looked this way and
that, not perceiving us who watched, walked warily
to the Lord Maire's station of the Mansion House,
boarded the District Railway, and did not alight
till Wimbledon. It was easy to follow, but my
friend, the billets, the tickets, were une grande
difficulte. I solved the problem of tickets by my
genius so superbe. We at first tried to take them,
but apres we abandoned the project so hopeless
and travelled sans payer. When asked at the
barriers or in the lifts, we offered pennies, and the
men who collected took them joyfully, asking not
whence we came. It was un procede ires simple.
It is possible that these wayward uncounted pennies
dropped into their own pockets. They rejoiced
always to receive them. From Wimbledon we
returned to Earl's Court, and then, descending by
an electric staircase, which moved of itself, again
found ourselves in the Tubes. I loved that escalier
electrique; one day I will return and ascend and
descend upon it for hours. From Earl's Court we
went to Piccadilly Circus; there we made another
change for Oxford Circus; there we again got out,
and at last, after penetrating the bowels of your
London, travelled to Liverpool Street. By this
time it had become dark, and the spy's passion for
underground travel had spent itself. He crossed
the street, descended to the grand station of the


THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
pantaloons and a green shirt. The child carried a
long pole and stood stiffly at attention. 'Ma foi,
do I see before me a Boy Scout?' I asked. 'You
do,' replied the Sub-Lieutenant. 'This is little
Tommy, the patrol leader of the Owls.' 'Mon
Dieu,' I cried, 'an Owl! Un Hibou! Is he then
stupid as an owl?' I could see that the Tommy so
small frowned savagely, but the Sub-Lieutenant
laughed. 'You will see presently if he is stupid.
I have forty miles of coast to watch, and I do it all
with Boy Scouts like this one.' 'Nom d'un chien,'
I cried. 'You English are a great people.' 'We
are,' agreed the Sub-Lieutenant, 'devilish great.'
Tommy grinned.
"Then the officer so youthful—his age could
not have exceeded nineteen years—gave orders to
the little Tommy. He was to go to the house,
to enter the garden, to squeeze his tiny per-
son into the boat-house, and watch. When the
spy and his associates went towards the boat.
Tommy was to warn us with a hoot—like an
owl—and we were to take charge. At least so I
understood the orders given in a strange sea
language. Tommy saluted, and vanished. If he
had twelve years, I should be astonished; but he
was a man, every inch of him. Wait till I have
finished.
"We followed quickly behind Tommy, but saw
him not, and joined my men, who still watched the
house. The Sub-Lieutenant and I moving warily,
climbed over the wall of the garden, and crept
along the grass, soft like moss to our feet, till we
could see the boat-house stand out against the dull*
shine of the river. There was no sign of the presence
of le petit Hibou. Suddenly the door of the house,


A COFFIN AND AN OWL
235
which gave upon the garden, opened, and four men
walked down to the boat-house and entered stealthily.
My heart turned to water—what a calamity if they
should find and slay the pretty little Owl! The
minutes passed, perhaps five, perhaps ten, and then
quite close we heard the soft low hoot of an owl.
The Sub-Lieutenant hooted a reply, and from among
some bushes there came out that serene, intrepid
infant with the pole! He joined us, and whispered
eagerly to the officer. I could not hear what he
said. Afterwards the Sub-Lieutenant told me that
the men had entered, three had got into the boat,
one remaining on land. It was a forty-foot boat,
reported Tommy—who seemed of wisdom and know-
ledge encyclopaedic—it had a big cabin forrard, the
engine was a Wotherspoon, ten cylinders set V-
fashion, the power a hundred horses. So Tommy
had observed and reported, and so I repeat to you.
As we watched we saw the boat push out into the
river, turn towards the sea; the engine so powerful
buzzed like a million bees, a wave curled up in front,
and it sped away for Holland like the shot of
an arrow. The night was fine, the sea calm; it
would complete the voyage in safety. But upon
return what a surprise has been prepared for
that motor-boat and its detestable owner! What
a surprise, ma foi. I yearn to hear of the de-
nouement.
"' We will nab the fourth man who has stayed
behind,' whispered the officer, and we crept towards
the boat-house. We were ten yards away when he
issued forth and turned to lock the door. Then
we sprang upon him. He was very quick—like
the big snake that he was. He heard us, spun round,
and struck two blows of his fist. The Sub-Lieu-


A COFFIN AND AN OWL
tion, no compliments, no embraces. 'Good work.'
'Thank you, sir,' Ma foi, what a people are the
English!"
"We locked up the spy. The Sub-Lieutenant
told me that wireless orders had gone out to the
patrols spread far over the seas. The boat, of which
we had the name and description, would arrive
at Holland, but upon its return on the morrow
it would be seized and escorted to Harwich. If
by mischance it eluded the patrols, it would be
captured when it arrived in the river Crouch.
All was provided for. The false news has gone to
Holland, and Froissart has done good work. I
ask for no reward; I will be like the English—
cold, implacable. When the officer said at parting
to me, 'Good work, M. Froissart, we are much
obliged to you,' I replied calmly, 'Thank you,
sir.' I had, you will observe, modelled myself
upon the little Owl.
"And you, Mr. Dawson," concluded Froissart,
wiping his face, for the effort of talking so much
English had brought out the sweat upon him, " have
you also succeeded?"
"Yes," said Dawson curtly, "I have also done
my work, but it was not exciting. My man was no
spy, and the real news about the Intrepid and Terrific
will not get through to Germany."
"Saved," roared Froissart, springing to his
feet. "We are colleagues most perfect. We
have done work of the most good. Embrassons-
nous, mon ami." Then occurred that deplorable
incident which has already been related. Frois-
sart in his enthusiasm embraced the unresponsive
Dawson, and was laid out by a short-arm jab
upon the diaphragm. It was really too bad of


238 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
Dawson; but then, as I have said, his temper
was atrocious.
* * *
The two battle-cruisers remained upon the shoals
of Picklecombe Point all through November and
well into the following month. The great salvage
steamer with the arc light went away, but others
remained. Work seemed to proceed, though it
was unaccountably slow in producing a result. The
Three Towns lost interest in the derelicts until one
evening there fell upon them a blow which set them
gasping for coherent speech. The newsboys were
crying in the streets a Special Edition, very Special.
Set in dirty type in an odd column, headed with the
mysterious words "Stop Press," appeared an an-
nouncement by the Admiralty that far away in the
South Seas the battle-cruisers Intrepid and Terrific,
under the command of Vice-Admiral Stocky, had
met and sunk the lately victorious German Squad-
ron! It was glorious news, but the Three Towns
thought little at the moment of the glory. They
urgently hungered for an explanation of the inscrut-
able means by which two battle-cruisers, mined and
cast upon the shoals below Mount Edgcumbe under
their very eyes, could race hot foot to the South Seas
and there lay out a German Squadron. As soon as
the winter dawn broke an immense crowd surged
upon the Hoe gazing into blank space. The two
battle-cruisers, which for a month had lain help-
less before them, were gone! Gone, too, were
the salvage steamers and the patrol boats. The
waters which had been so active and crowded
were void! Then the Three Towns understood
they grasped, men, women and children, the great


PART IV
THE CAPTAIN OF MARINES
»4>


CHAPTER XV
DAWSON REAPPEARS
I had seen nothing of Dawson during my intimate
association with Madame Gilbert. He had written
to me copiously—for a very busy man he was a
curiously voluminous letter-writer. He always
employed the backs of official forms and wrote in
pencil. His handwriting, large and round, was
that of a man who had received a good and careful
Board School education, but was quite free from
personal characteristics. Dawson's letters in no
respect resembled the man. They were very long,
very dull, and very crudely phrased. He had evi-
dently tried to put them into what he conceived to
be a literary shape, and the effect was deplorable.
One may read such letters, the work of unskilled
writers, in the newspapers which devote space to
"Correspondence." The writers, like Dawson, can
probably talk vividly and forcibly, using strong
nervous vernacular English, but the moment they
take the pen all thought and individual character
become swamped in a flood of turgid, commonplace
jargon. I was disappointed with Dawson's letters,
and I am sure that he will be even more disappointed
when he finds none of them made immortal in this
*43


246 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
always relate to the past, to incidents completed.
When he has a delicate job on hand, he can be as
close as the English Admiralty, even to me. He
has no sense of proportion. Again and again he
has recounted the interminable details of cases in
which I take not the smallest interest, and has
ignored all my efforts to dam the unprofitable flood
of narrative and to divert the current into more
fruitful channels. He looks at everything from the
Dawson standpoint, and cares for nothing which
does not add to the glory of Dawson. Unless he
fills the stage, an incident has for him no value or
concern. Happily for me the most startling of his
exploits, that of bending a timid War Committee
of the Cabinet to his will in the winter of 1915-1916,
and of bluffing into utter submission nearly a hundred
thousand rampant munition workers who were
eager to " down tools," fulfils all the Dawson con-
ditions of importance. He, and he alone, filled a
star part, to him and to him alone belonged the
success of an incredibly bold manoeuvre. I have
drawn Dawson as I saw him, in his weakness and
in his strength. I have revealed his vanity and the
carefully hidden tenderness of his heart. In my
whimsical way I have perhaps treated him as essen-
tially a figure of fun. But though "f-may smile at
him, even rudely laugh at him, he is a great public
servant who once at least—though few at the time
knew—saved his country from a most grievous peril.
In the early weeks of 1916, when work for the
Navy, and work in the gun and ammunition shops
which were rapidly being organised all over the
country, were within a very little of being suspended
by a general strike of workmen, terrified for their
threatened trade-union privileges, the strength and


DAWSON REAPPEARS 249
respect an order—they like to be governed—but they
despise slop. What the devil's the use of Ministers
going North and telling the men how well they
have done, and how patriotic they are, when the
men themselves all know that they've done damn
badly and mean to do worse? I could settle the
whole business in twenty-four hours."
"They are frightened men, Dawson," said the
Chief. "That is the matter with the Government.
They have been brought up to slobber over the
public and try to cheat it out of votes. They can't
tell the truth. When hard deadly reality breaks
through their web of make-believe, they cower to-
gether in corners and howl. I doubt if you will
get a free hand, Dawson. What do you want—
martial law?"
"Yes. That, or something like it. If I have the
threat of it at my back, so that it rests with me, and
me alone, to put it into force, I shall not need to
use it. But I must go North with the proclamation
in my pocket or I shall not go North at all. Here
is my resignation." Dawson tossed a letter upon
the table, and laughed. The Chief picked it up and
read the curt lines in which Dawson delivered his
last word.
"Good man," commented he; "that is the way
to talk. Tfiey can't understand how any man
can have the grit to resign a fat job before he is
kicked out. They never do. They compromise.
You may put starch into their soft backbones, but
personally I doubt the possibility. But at least
you will get your chance. There is to be a meeting
of the War Committee the first thing to-morrow
morning and you are to be summoned. I told the
Home Secretary that I should resign myself if they
17


250 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
did not give you a full opportunity to state your
case. I will support you as long as I am in this
chair."
Dawson held out his hand. "Thank you," he
said simply. The two men clasped hands and looked
into one another's eyes. "It is a good country,
Dawson," said the Chief—" a jolly good country,
and worth big risks to oneself. It will be saved by
plain, honest men if it is to be saved at all. Our
worst enemies are not the Germans, but our flabby-
fibred political classes at home. The people are just
crying out to be told what to do, and to be made to
do it. Yet nobody tells them. Don't let the
Cabinet browbeat you, and smother you with plau-
sible sophistries. Just talk plain English to them,
Dawson."
"I will. For once in their sheltered lives they
shall hear the truth."
For what follows, Dawson is my principal, but not
my sole authority. I have tested what he told me
in every way that I could, and the test has held.
Somehow—I am prepared to believe in the manner
told by him—he forced the Cabinet to give him the
authority for which he asked, and he used it in the
manner which I shall tell of. He held what is always
a first-rate advantage: he knew exactly what he
wanted, no more or less, and was prepared to get it
or retire from official life. Those who gave to him
authority gave it reluctantly—gave it because they
were between the devil and the deep sea. They
would gladly have thrown over Dawson, but they
could not throw over the civil and military powers
who supported him in his demands. And had they
thrown him over they would have been left to deal
by their incompetent unaided selves with a strike


DAWSON REAPPEARS 251
in the midst of war which might have spread like a
prairie fire over the whole country. But though
they bent before Dawson, I am very sure that they
did not love him, and that he will never be the
Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Against
his name in the official books stands a mark of the
most deadly blackness. Strength and success are
never pardoned by weakness and failure.
When at last Dawson was summoned to the sitting
of the War Committee, he found himself in the
presence of. some half a dozen elderly and em-
barrassed-looking gentlemen arranged round a big
table. They had been discussing him, and trying
to devise some decent civil means to get rid of him.
He and his story of the coming strike in the North
were a distressful inconvenience, an intolerable
intrusion upon a quiet life. When he entered, he
was without a friend in the room, except the War
Minister, who loved a man who knew his own mind
and was prepared to accept big responsibilities. But
even he doubted whether it were possible to achieve
the results aimed at with the means required by
Dawson.
Our friend suffered from no illusions. "I knew
what I was up against," he said to me long after-
wards. "I knew that they were all longing to be
quit of me and to go to sleep again. But I had
made up my mind that they should get some very
plain speaking. I would compel them to under-
stand that what I offered was a forlorn chance of
averting a civil war, and that if they refused my
offer they would be left to themselves—not to stamp
out a spark of revolution, but to subdue a roaring
furnace. They could take their choice in the cer-
tain knowledge that if they chose wrongly the North


DAWSON REAPPEARS 253
the Home Secretary can enlighten us?" The Prime
Minister paused, and smiled happily to himself. He
had at least made things nasty for an intrusive
colleague. But the Home Secretary, suave, alert,
was not to be caught. He at any rate was not
prepared to admit responsibility.
"It is possible, sir," he said, " that in some vague,
undefined, constitutional way I am responsible for
the police service of the United Kingdom. But
happily my direct charge does not in practice extend
beyond England. The centre of disturbance appears
to be on the northern side of the Border, within the
jurisdiction of the Secretary for Scotland. It is
possible that my right honourable friend who holds
that office, and whom I am pleased to see here with
us, will answer the Prime Minister's question. He
is responsible for his obstreperous countrymen."
The Home Secretary paused, and also smiled happily
to himself. He had evaded a trap, and had involved
an unloved colleague in its meshes; what more could
be required of a highly placed Minister?
"God forbid!" cried the Scottish Secretary hastily.
"These aggressive and troublesome workmen are no
countrymen of mine. It is true," he added pen-
sively, "that when I am in the North I claim that
a somewhat shadowy Scottish ancestry makes of
me a Scot to the finger tips, but no sooner do I
cross the Border upon my return to London than I
revert violently to my English self. A kindly Provi-
dence has ordained that the central Scottish Office
should be in London, and my urgent duties compel
me to reside there permanently. Which is indeed
fortunate. It is true that technically my responsi-
bilities cover everything, or nearly everything, which
occurs in the unruly North, but I do not interfere


254 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
with the discretion of those on the spot who know
the local conditions and can deal adequately with
them. I am content to rest my action upon the
advice of those responsible authorities whose con-
sidered opinions have been quoted by the Prime
Minister."
The Prime Minister smiled no more. The wheel
which he had jogged so agreeably had come full
round, and, in colloquial speech, had biffed him in
the eye. He fumbled the papers once more, and
frowned.
"It seems to me," plaintively put in the First
Lord of the Admiralty (a political chief very different
from the one whom Dawson encountered in Chapter
XII), " though I am a child in these high matters,
that no one is ever responsible for the exercise of
those duties with which he is nominally charged.
For, consider my own case. Though I am the First
Lord, and attend daily at the Admiralty, I am con-
vinced that the active and accomplished young
gentleman whom I had the misfortune to succeed
regards himself as still responsible to the people of
this country for the disposition and control of the
Fleets. At least that is the not unnatural impres-
sion which I derive from his frequent speeches and
newspaper articles."
There was a general laugh, in which all joined
except the War Minister and Dawson. They were
not politicians.
"If there is a big strike," growled the War Minis -
ter, " the Spring Offensive will be off. It is threat-
ened now, very seriously. I am months behind
with my howitzers."
His colleagues looked reproachfully at the famous
warrior, and shifted uneasily in their chairs. He


DAWSON REAPPEARS 255
had an uncomfortable habit of blurting forth the
most unpleasant truths.
"Yes," put in the Minister for Munitions, "we
are behind with the howitzers and with ammunition
of all kinds. But what can one do with these savage
brutes in the North? I went there myself and
spoke plainly to them. By God's grace I am still
alive, though at one moment I had given up myself
for lost. At one works where I made a speech the
audience were armed with what I believe are called
monkey wrenches, and showed an almost uncon-
trollable passion for launching them at my head. I
was hustled and wellnigh personally assaulted. Like
my patriotic friend the Scottish Secretary, I was
very happy indeed when I got south of the Border.
The central office of the Munitions Department is
happily in London, and my urgent duties compel
me to reside there, permanently. I have no leisure
for roving expeditions."
"This is very interesting," broke in the First
Lord, who lay back in his chair with shut eyes.
"There appears to be no eagerness on the part of
any one of us to stick his hands into the northern
hornets' nest, or to admit any responsibility for it.
All of us, that is, except our courageous and silent
friend Mr. Dawson." He opened his eyes and
smiled most winningly towards Dawson. "Would
it not be well if we gave him an opportunity of tell-
ing us what his views are?"
"I have been waiting for him to begin," growled
the War Minister.
"We are at your service, Mr. Dawson," said the
Prime Minister graciously.
Dawson, standing stiffly at attention, had closely
followed the conversation, and, as it proceeded, his


256 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
heart sank. He despaired of discovering courage
and quick decision in the group of Ministers before
him. Yet when called upon he made a last effort.
If the country were to be saved, it must be saved
by its people, not by its politicians, and he was a
man of the people, resolute, enduring, longsuffering.
"Gentlemen," said he, "we are threatened with
a strike in the Northern shops and shipyards which
will cripple the country. It will begin within forty-
eight hours. I can stop it if I go North to-night
with the full powers of the Government in my
pocket, and with the means for which I ask. All
the authorities in the North, civil, military and
naval, have approved of my plans. I ask only
leave to carry them out."
"Your plans are—?" snapped the War Minister.
"To get my blow in first," said Dawson simply.
The First Lord again looked at Dawson, and a
glint of fighting light flashed in his tired eyes.
"Thrice armed is he who has his quarrel just; and
four times he who gets his blow in fust. How
would you do it, Mr. Dawson?"
"Yes, how ?" eagerly inquired the War Minister.
"I have served," said Dawson, "in most parts
of the world. When in West Africa one is attacked
by a snake, one does not wait until it bites. One
cuts off its head."
"You have served?" asked the War Minister.
"In what Service?"
"The Red Marines," proudly answered Dawson.
"Ah!" The War Minister was plainly interested,
and Dawson had, during the rest of the interview,
no eyes for any one except for him and for the First
Lord. He recognised these two as brother fighting
men. The others he waved aside as civilian truck.


DAWSON REAPPEARS 257
"Ah! The Red Marines. Long service men, the
best we have. So you would cut off the snake's
head before it can bite."
"To-morrow afternoon," explained Dawson, " I
must attend a meeting of shop stewards, over two
hundred of them. They contain the head of the
snake. Give me powers, a proclamation of martial
law which I may show them, and I will cut off the
snake's head."
"You soldiers are always prating about martial
law," grumbled the Prime Minister. "We have
given to you the amplest powers under the Defence
of the Realm Act and the Munitions Act to punish
strikers. Those are sufficient. I have no patience
with plans for enforcing a military despotism."
"Excuse me, sir," said Dawson patiently, as to
a child, "but if a hundred thousand men go out
on strike, your Acts of Parliament will be waste
paper. You cannot lock up or fine a hundred
thousand men, and if you could you would still be
unable to make them work. No means have ever
been devised to make unwilling men work, except
the lash, and that is useless with skilled labour.
No one in the North cares a rap for Acts of Parlia-
ment, but there is a mystery about martial law
which carries terror into the hardest heart and the
most stupid brain. I want a signed proclamation
of martial law, but I undertake not to issue it unless
all other forms of pressure fail. I must have it all
in cold print to show to the shop stewards when I
strike my blow. Without that proclamation I am
helpless, and you will be helpless, too, by Friday
next. This is Wednesday. Unless I cut off the
snake's head to-morrow, it will bite you here even
in your sheltered London."


264
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
uniform, with which I happened by family associa-
tion to be intimately acquainted. He did not spare
me a badge or a button. I am convinced that no
girl wore her first ball-dress with half the palpitating
pride with which Dawson surveyed himself in his
captain's kit. When I chaffed him gently, and
hinted that the stars of a captain were cheaply
come by in these days, he had one retort always
ready, "Not in the Red Marines." He did not
value his office of Chief Detective Inspector a rap
beside that temporary rank of Captain of Red
Marines. He had, you see, been a private in that
proud exclusive Corps, and its glory for him out-
shone all human glories.
He flew away to Chatham as fast as a deliberate
railway service permitted, and found upon arrival
that an urgent telegram from the Adjutant-General
had preceded him. Dawson was shown at once to
the Commandant's quarters, and there explained
his requirements. "Eighty men, two sergeants,
and a regular lieutenant. Not one of less than
five years' service. Also a sea-service kit with a
captain's stars for me. The mess-sergeant will fit
me out. He trades in second-hand uniforms."
"You have the advantage of me, Mr. Dawson,"
said the Commandant, smiling, "in your profound
knowledge of the functions of a mess sergeant."
"I was a recruit here, sir, when you were a
captain. I know the by-ways of Chatham and the
perquisites of mess-sergeants. I was a sergeant
myself once."
"I remember you, Dawson," said the Comman-
dant kindly, " and am proud to see one of us become
so great a man. By the regulations a temporary
officer should wear khaki."


266 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
expedition. In one small detail Dawson changed
his plans. He had intended to take two sergeants
only, but in Chatham there were four who had served
with him in the ranks, and he could not withstand
their pleadings. When all was settled, Dawson went
to the Commandant's quarters to be introduced to
his second-in-command, and surprised there that
officer endeavouring to squeeze his rather middle-
aged figure within the buttoned limits of a subaltern's
tunic. Since the senior officers of Marines never go
to sea, the Commandant's own official uniform was
the field-service khaki of a Staff officer. "It is all
right," explained he, laughing. "I have become a
lieutenant again, and am going north with you.
But I wish that your friend the mess-sergeant had
a pattern B tunic which would meet roundjFmy
middle. My young men must be devilish slim nowa-
days. I have been on to the A.-G. by 'phone. He
pretends to be derisory, but I am convinced that
really he is desperately jealous. He would love to
go too. You seem, my good Dawson, to have
stirred up Whitehall and Spring Gardens in a manner
most emphatic."
"But you can't serve under me, sir," cried Daw-
son, aghast.
"Can't I!" retorted the new Lieutenant. "If
admirals can joyfully go afloat as lieut.-com-
manders, as lots of them are doing, what is to prevent
a Colonel of Marines serving as a subaltern? I
am on this job with you, Dawson, if you will
have me."
"With four sergeants and eighty Marines," said
Dawson slowly, " you and I could have held Mons."
"We could that," cried the Colonel-Lieutenant,
who had by now completed the reduction of his


272 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
raiment. They pass a Munitions Act to chain the
worker to his master. They ' dilute ' labour to call
into being an invisible army which can be mobilised
at short notice to defeat the struggles of striking
artisans. The attack of the masters must be re-
sisted. The workers must fight. There is a fascin-
ating attraction in the idea of meeting force with
force, violence with violence. It is undeniable
that many of the more thoughtful among the toilers
would consider that their lives had not been spent
in vain if they organised their comrades to drilled
and armed rebellion."
The speaker paused. He was encouraged by a
few cheers, but the mass of his hearers were silent.
He glanced at Dawson, whose face was set in an
expressionless mask. Cheers came again, and he
went on, but with less assurance. "The worker's
labour power is his only wealth. It is also his highest
weapon. But the workers need not think of using
this weapon so long as they are split and divided
into sects and groups and crafts. To be effective
they must organise as workers. An organisation
that would include all the workers, skilled and un-
skilled, throughout the entire country, would prove
irresistible. But as matters stand at present I do
not advocate armed rebellion. I advocate and
herewith proclaim a general strike."
He sat down, and there was a long silence. The
die had been cast. If the meeting broke up with-
out the emphatic assertion of the Government's
authority, then a general strike upon the morrow was
as certain as that the sun would rise. It was for
this moment, this intensely critical moment, that
Dawson had worked and fought in London, and for
which he was now ready. The chairman sighed and


DAWSON STRIKES 279
Marines of yours. We did not believe that the
Government meant business. We thought that we
should have more talk, talk, and we are all sick of
talk. We are true patriots here—you have taken
away all those who cared nothing for their country
—and we feel that if you are prepared to use Martial
Law and the forces of the Crown against us, that you
must be very much in earnest. We feel that you
would not do these terrible things unless the need
were very urgent. We do not agree that the need
is urgent, but if you, representing the Government,
say that it is, we have no course open to us but to
submit. If we now surrender unconditionally and
promise heartily to use every effort to bring the mass
of the men to our views, will you in your turn give
us your personal assurance that all our legitimate
grievances will be fully considered, and that every
effort will be made to meet them? You may crush
us, sir, but you will not get good work from men
whose spirit has been broken."
"I cannot make conditions," replied Dawson
gently; "but ask yourselves why I brought my
Marines all the way from Chatham to deal with this
meeting? Was it not that I would not put upon
you the pain and humiliation of arrest at the hands
, of your own sons and brothers? Though I stand
here with gold stars on my shoulders I am one of
you. My father worked all his life in the dockyard
at Portsmouth, and I myself as a boy have been a
holder-on in a black squad of riveters. I can
make no conditions, but if you will leave yourself
entirely in my hands, and in those of my superiors,
you may be assured that there will be no attempt
made to crush you, to break your spirit."
As he said these words an inspiration came to him,


282
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
Though Dawson thus became entitled to call
himself Captain for the duration of the war, he never
used the rank or the uniform again. Once more, to
my knowledge, he served in his well-beloved Corps,
but it was then not as Captain, but as private, during
his long watch in the Malplaquet, of which I have
told the story earlier in this book.


2Q0 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
him. In actual everyday practice there are rarely
more than six Dawsons in being at the same time.
He finds that number sufficient for all useful pur-
poses; a greater number, he says, would excessively
strain his memory. He has, you see, always to
remember which Dawson he is at any moment.
When he was pulling my leg, or that of his brave
enemy Froissart, the number multiplied greatly,
but, as a working business rule, he is modestly
content with six. "I suppose," I asked, "that
here in Acacia Villas you are always the genuine
article."
"Always," he declared with emphasis. "Once,"
he went on, " I tried to play a game on Emma. I
came home as one of the others, forced my way into
the house, and was clouted over the head and chucked
into the street. When I got back to the Yard to
alter myself—for I had left my tools there—Emma
had been telephoning to me to get the wicked
stranger arrested for house-breaking. I never tried
any more games; women have no sense of humour."
He shuddered. Dawson is afraid of his wife, and
I pictured to myself a great haughty woman with
the figure and arms of a Juno.
But when Clara—who asked kindly after my little
Jane—had summoned us to the dining-room, I was
presented to a small, quiet mouse of a woman whose
head reached no higher than Dawson's heart. This
was the redoubtable Emma !" Did she really clout
you over the head and chuck you into the street?"
I whispered. "She did, sir!" he replied, smiling.
"She threw me yards over my own doorstep."
Between Dawson and his little wife there is a
very tender affection. In her eyes he is not a
police officer, but an inspired preacher. * She knows


292 THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
from him the full flavour of his genius for detection.
Dawson, away from home, is so vain as to be un-
conscious of his vanity; Dawson at home is quite
extraordinarily modest. He defers always to the
opinion of Emma, and she, gently, kindly, but with
an air of infinite superiority, keeps his wandering
steps firmly in the path of truth. He is, I am told,
a most kindling preacher, but it is Emma who
inspires his sermons.
Once only during my visit did I see a flash of the
old Dawson, the Dawson of the Malplaquet, and of
the War Committee, and that was just before I left.
We were in the parlour smoking, and I was getting
rather bored. Conjugal virtue, domestic content
and happiness, are beautiful to look upon for a
while, but I confess that in a remorseless continuous
film (" featuring" Dawson and Emma) I find
them boresome. There is little humour about Daw-
son and none at all about his dear Emma. I would
gladly exchange fifty virtuous Emmas for one
naughty Madame Gilbert. We had been talking
idly of our sport together and of his different in-
carnations. Suddenly he sprang from his chair
and his pale face lighted up. "Now that I have
you here, Mr. Copplestone, I shall not let you go
until you tell me by what trick you can always see
through my disguises. Would you know me now
as Dawson?"
"Of course," said I. "There is no difficulty. If
you painted your face black and your hair vermilion,
I should still know you at once."
"You have promised to tell me the secret. Tell
me now."
I considered whether I should tell. It was amus-
ing to have some hold over him, but was it quite fair