Chapter IX: Part 9

The game was finished and it needed no inquiry to learn how it had gone. Mr Crediton was handing the venerable Spinola a memorandum of indebtedness. His words and attitude did not convey the impression of a graceful loser.

“I wish you two men would give me the tip for beating this purgatorial image,” he grumbled as they came up. “I thought that he’d struck a losing line after your experience and this is the result.” He indicated the spectacle of their amiable host folding up his I.O.U. preparatory to dropping it carelessly into a letter-rack, and shrugged his shoulders with keen disgust.

“I’ll tell you if you like,” suggested Sir Fergus. “Hold the better cards.”

“And play them better,” added Carrados. “Good heavens!”

A very untoward thing had happened. They had all been standing together round the table, Spinola purring appreciatively, Crediton fuming his ill-restrained annoyance, and the other two mildly satirical at his expense. Carrados held a cup of coffee in his hand. He reached towards the table with it, seemed to imagine that he was a full foot nearer than he was, and before anyone had divined his mistake, cup, saucer and the entire contents had dropped neatly upon Mr Spinola’s startled feet, saturating his lower extremities to the skin.

“Good heavens! What on earth have I done?”

Crediton shrieked out his ill-humour in gratified amusement; Sir Fergus reddened deeply with embarrassment at his friend’s mishap. Victim and culprit stood the ordeal best.

“My unfortunate defect!” murmured Carrados with feeling. “How ever can I----”

“I who have eyes ought to have looked after my guest better,” replied Spinola with antique courtliness. He reduced Crediton with a glance of quiet dignity and declined Carrados’s handkerchief with a reassuring touch on the blind man’s arm. “No, no, my dear sir, if you will excuse me for a few minutes. It is really nothing, really nothing, I do assure you.”

He withdrew from the room to change. Copling began to prepare a reassuring phrase to meet Carrados’s self-reproaches when they should break forth again. But the blind man’s tone had altered; he was no longer apologetic.

“Play them better,” he repeated to Crediton, as if there had been no interruption, “and play under conditions that are equal. For instance, it might be worth while making sure that a Japanese mask does not conceal a pair of human eyes. If I were a loser I should be inclined to have a look.”

Not until then did it occur to Sir Fergus that his friend’s clumsiness had been a calculated ruse to force Spinola to withdraw for a few minutes. Later on he might be able to admire the simple ingenuity of the trick, but at that moment he almost hated Carrados for the cool effrontery with which he had duped all their feelings.

No such subtleties, however, concerned Crediton. He stared at the blind man, followed the indication of his gesture and all at once grasped the significance of the hint.

“By George, I shouldn’t wonder if you aren’t right!” he exclaimed. “There are one or two things----” Without further consideration he rushed a table against the wall, swung up a chair on to it, and mounting the structure began to wrench the details of the trophy from side to side and up and down in his excited efforts to displace them.

“Hurry up,” urged Copling, more nervous than excited. “He won’t be long.”

“Hurry up?” Crediton paused, panting from his furious efforts, and found time to look down upon his accomplices. “I don’t think that it’s for us to concern ourselves, by George!” he retorted. “Spinola had better hurry up and bolt for it, I should say. There’s light behind here--a hole through the wall. I believe the place is a regular swindling hell.”

His eyes went to the group of weapons again and the sight gave him a new idea.

“Aha, what price this?” he cried, and pulling a short sword out of its sheath he drove it in between mask and wall and levered the shell away, nails and all. “By God, if the eyes aren’t a pair of opera-glasses! And there’s a regular paraphernalia here----”

“So,” interrupted a quiet voice behind them, “you have been too clever for an old man, Mr Carrados?”

Spinola had returned unheard and was regarding the work of detection with the utmost benignness. Copling looked and felt ridiculously guilty; the blind man betrayed no emotion at all and both were momentarily silent. It fell to Crediton to voice retort.

“My I.O.U., if you don’t mind, Mr Spinola,” he demanded, tumbling down from his perch and holding out an insistent hand.

“With great pleasure,” replied Spinola, picking it out from the contents of the letter-rack. “Also,” he continued, referring to the contents of his pocket-book, while his guest tore up the memorandum into very small pieces and strewed them about the carpet, “also the sum of fifty-seven pounds, thirteen shillings which I feel myself compelled to return to you in spite of your invariable grace in losing. I have already rung; you will find the front door waiting open for you, Mr Crediton.”

“‘Compelled’ is good,” sneered Crediton. “You will probably find a train waiting for you at Charing Cross, Mr Spinola. I advise you to catch it before the police arrive.” He nodded to the other two men and departed, to spread the astounding news in the most interested quarters.

Spinola continued to beam irrepressible benevolence.

“You are equally censorious, if more polite than Mr Crediton in expressing it, eh, my dear young friends?” he said.

“I thought that you were a genuine mathematician--I vouched for it,” replied Sir Fergus with more regret than anything else. “And the extent of your achievement has been to contrive a vulgar imposture--in the guise of an ingenious inventor to swindle society by a sham automaton that doesn’t even work.”

“You thought that--you still think that?”

“What else is there to think? We have seen with our own eyes.”

“And”--turning to his other guest--“Mr Carrados, who does not see?”

“I am waiting to hear,” replied the blind man.

“But you, Sir Fergus, you who are also--in an elementary way--a mathematician, and one with whom I have conversed freely, you regard me as a common swindler and think that this--this tawdry piece of buffoonery that is only designed to appeal to the vapid craze for novelty of your foolish friends--this is, as you say, the extent of my achievement?”

Copling gave a warning cry and sprang forward, but it was too late to avert what he saw coming. In his petulant annoyance at the comparison Spinola had laid an emphasising hand upon Aurelius and half unconsciously had given the figure a contemptuous push. It swayed, seemed to poise for a second, and then toppling irretrievably forward crashed to the floor with an impact that snapped the golden head from off its shoulders and shook the room and the very house itself.

“There, there,” muttered the old man, as though he was doing no more than regretting a broken tea-cup; “let it lie, let it lie. We have finished our work together, Aurelius and I. Now let the whole world----”

It would have been too much to expect the remainder of the mysterious household, whoever its members were, to ignore the tempestuous course of events taking place within their midst. The door was opened suddenly and a young lady, with consternation charged on every feature of her attractive face, burst into the room. For the moment her eyes took in only two figures of the curious group--the aged Spinola and his fallen handiwork.

“Granda!” she cried, “whatever’s happened? What is it all? Oh, are you hurt?”

“It is nothing, nothing at all; a mere contretemps of no importance,” he reassured her quickly. Then, with a recurrence of his most grandiloquent manner, he recalled her to the situation. “Mercia, our guests--Sir Fergus Copling, Mr Carrados. Sir Fergus, Mr Carrados--Miss Dugard.”

“Then it _is_ Mercia!” articulated the bewildered baronet. “Mercia, you here! What does it mean? What are you doing?”

“What are you doing, Sir Fergus?” retorted the girl in cold reproach. “Is this the way you generally keep your promises? Gambling!”

“Well, really,” stammered the abashed gentleman, “I--I only----”

“Sir Fergus only played a game for a mere nominal stake, to demonstrate the working to his friend,” interposed Spinola with a shrewd glance--a curious blend of serpentine innocence and dove-like cunning--at the estranged young people.

“And won,” added Sir Fergus _sotto voce_, as if that fact condoned his offence.

“Won indeed!” flashed out Miss Dugard. “Of course you won--I let you. Do you think that we wished to take money from you now?”

“You--_you_ let me!” muttered Sir Fergus helplessly. “Good heavens!”

“I am grateful that your consideration also extends to your friend’s friend,” put in Carrados pleasantly.

Miss Dugard smiled darkly at the suavely-given thrust and showed her pretty little teeth almost as though she would like to use them.

“There, there, that will do, my child,” said the old man indulgently. “Sir Fergus and Mr Carrados are entitled to an explanation and they shall have it. The moment is opportune; the work of a lifetime is complete. You have seen, Sir Fergus, the sums that Aurelius--assisted, as we will now admit, by a little external manipulation--has gathered into our domestic exchequer. Where have they gone, these hundreds and thousands that you may estimate? In lavish living and a costly establishment? Observe this very ordinary apartment--the best the house possesses. Recall the grounds through which you entered. Sum up the simple hospitality of which you have partaken. In expensive personal tastes and habits? I assure you, Sir Fergus, that I am a man of the most frugal life; my granddaughter inherits the propensity. In what, then? In advancing science, in benefitting humanity, in furthering human progress. I am going to prove to you that I have perfected one of the greatest mechanical inventions of all ages, and I ask you to credit the plain statement that all my private fortune and all the winnings that you have seen upon this table--with the exception of a bare margin for the necessities of life--have been spent in perfecting it.”

He paused with a senile air of triumph and seemed to challenge comment.

“But surely,” ventured Copling, “surely on the strength of this you would have had no difficulty in obtaining direct financial support. Well, I myself----”

Spinola smiled a peculiar smile, shaking his head sagely.

“Take care, my generous young friend, take care. You may not quite comprehend what you are saying.”

“Why?”

Still swayed by his own gentle amusement, the old man crossed the room to a desk, selected a letter from a bulky pile and handed it to his guest without a word.

Copling glanced at the heading and signature, then read the contents and frowned annoyance.

“This is from my secretary,” he commented lamely.

“That is what a secretary is for, is it not--to save his employer trouble?” insinuated Spinola. “He took me for a crank or a begging-letter impostor, of course.” Then came the pathetic whisper. “They _all_ took me for that.”

Sir Fergus folded the letter and handed it back again.

“I am very sorry,” he said simply.

“It was natural, perhaps. Still, something had to be done. My work was all arrested. I could no longer pay my two skilled mechanics. Time was pressing. I am a very old man--I am more than a hundred years old----”

The girl shot a sudden, half-frightened, pleading glance at her lover, then at Mr Carrados. It checked the exclamation that would have come from Copling; the blind man passed the monstrous claim without betraying astonishment.

“--a very old man and my work was yet incomplete. So I contrived Aurelius. I could, of course, have perfected a model that would have done all that has been claimed for this--mere child’s play to me--but what would have been the good? Such a mechanical player would have lost as often as he would have won. Hence our little subterfuge, a means amply justified by so glorious an end.”

He was smiling happily--the weeks of elaborate deception were, at the worst, an innocent ruse to him--and concluded with an emphasising nod to each in turn, to Mercia, who regarded him with implicit faith and veneration, to Copling, who at that moment surely had ample justification for declaring to himself that he was dashed if he knew what to think, and to Carrados, whose sightless look agreed to everything and gave nothing in reply. Then the old man stood up and produced his keys.

“Come, my friends,” he continued; “the moment has arrived. I am going to show you now what no other eye has yet been privileged to see. My mechanics worked on the parts under my instruction, but in ignorance of the end. Even Mercia--a good girl, a very clever girl--has never yet passed this door.” He had led them through the house and brought them to a brick-built, windowless shed, isolated in the garden at the back. “I little thought that the first demonstration----But things have fallen so, things have fallen, and one never knows. Perhaps it is for the best.” An iron door had yielded to his patent key. He entered, turned on a bunch of electric lights and stood aside. “Behold!”

The room was a workshop, fitted with the highly finished devices of metal-working and littered with the scraps and débris of their use. In the middle stood a more elaborate contrivance--the finished product of brass and steel--a cube scarcely larger than a packing-case, but seemingly filled with wheels and rods, relay upon relay, and row after row, all giving the impression of exquisite precision in workmanship and astonishing intricacy of detail.

“Why, it’s a calculating machine,” exclaimed Sir Fergus, going forward with immense interest.

“It is an analytical engine, or, to use the more common term, a calculating machine, as you say,” assented the inventor. “I need hardly remind you, of course, that one does not spend a lifetime and a fortune in contriving a machine to do single calculations, however involved, but for the more useful and practical purpose of working out involved series with absolute precision. Still, for the purpose of a trial demonstration we will begin with an ordinary proposition, if you, Sir Fergus, will kindly set one. My engine now is constructed to work to fifty places of figures and twelve orders of difference.”

“If you have accomplished that,” remarked Copling, accepting the pencil and the slip of paper offered him, “you have surpassed the dreams of Babbage, Mr Spinola.”

There was a sudden gasp from Mercia, but it passed unheeded in the keen excitement of the great occasion. Spinola received the paper with its row of signs and figures and turned to operate his engine. He paused to look back gleefully.

“So you never guessed, Sir Fergus?” he chuckled cunningly. “We kept the secret well, but it doesn’t matter now. _I am Charles Babbage!_”

The noise of wheel and connecting-rod cut off the chance of a reply, even if anyone had been prepared to make one. But no one, in that bewildering moment, was.

“The solution,” announced Spinola with a flourish, and he passed a little slip of metal stamped with a row of figures into Sir Fergus’s hand. Then, with a curious indifference to their verdict, he turned away from the group and applied himself to the machine again.

“What is it? Is it not correct?” demanded Mercia in an agonised whisper. She had not looked at the solution, but at her lover’s face, and her hand suddenly gripped his arm.

“It is incomprehensible,” replied Sir Fergus, dropping his voice so that the old man could not overhear. “It isn’t a matter of right or wrong--it is a mere farrago of nonsense.”

“But harmless nonsense--quite harmless,” interposed Carrados softly from behind them. “Come, we can safely leave him here; you will always be able to leave him safely here. Help Miss Dugard out, Copling. It is better, believe me, to leave him now.”

Spinola did not turn. He was bending over the machine to which he had given life, brain and fortune, touching its wheels and sliding rods with loving fingers. They passed silently from his presence and crept back to the deserted salon, where the deposed head of Aurelius leered cynically at them from the floor.

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VIII

The Kingsmouth Spy Case

“Not guilty, my lord!” There was a general laugh in the lounge of the Rose and Plumes, the comfortable old Cliffhurst hotel that upheld the ancient traditions unaffected by the flaunting rivalry of Grand or Metropole. The jest hidden in the retort was a small one, but it was at the expense of a pompous, pretentious bore, and the speaker was a congenial wag who had contrived in the course of a few weeks to win a facile popularity on all sides.

Across the room one of the later arrivals--“the blind gentleman,” as he was sympathetically alluded to, for few had occasion to learn his name--turned slightly towards the direction of the voice and added a pleasantly appreciative smile to the common tribute. Then his attention again settled on the writing-table at which he sat, and for the next few minutes his pencil travelled smoothly, with an occasional pause for consideration, over the block of telegraphic forms that he had picked out. At the end of ten minutes he rang for a waiter and directed that his own man should be sent to him.

“Here are three telegrams to go off, Parkinson,” he said in the suave, agreeable voice that scarcely ever varied, no matter what the occasion might be. “You will take them yourself at once. After that I shall not require you again to-night.”

The attendant thanked him and withdrew. The blind man closed his letter-case, retired from the writing-table to the obscurity of a sequestered corner and sat unnoticed with his sightless eyes, that always seemed to be quietly smiling, looking placidly into illimitable space as he visualised the scene before him, and the laughter, the conversation and the occasional whisper went on unchecked around.

* * * * *

Max Carrados had journeyed down to Cliffhurst a few days previously, good-naturedly, but without any enthusiasm. Indeed it had needed all Mr Carlyle’s persuasive eloquence to move him.

“The Home Office, Max,” urged the inquiry agent, “one of the premier departments of the State! Consider the distinction! Surely you will not refuse a commission of that nature direct from the Government?” Carrados, looking a little deeper than a Melton overcoat and a glossy silk hat, had once declared his friend to be the most incurably romantic of idealists. He now took a malicious pleasure in reducing the situation to its crudest terms.

“Why can’t the local police arrest a solitary inoffensive German spy themselves?” he inquired.

“To tell the truth, Max, I believe that there are two or three fingers in that pie at the present moment,” replied Mr Carlyle confidentially. “It doesn’t concern the Home Office alone. And after that Guitry Bay fiasco and the unmerciful chaffing that we got in the German papers--with rather a nasty rap or two over the knuckles from the _Kölnische Zeitung_--both Whitehall and Downing Street are in a blue funk lest they should do the wrong thing, either let the man slip away with the papers or arrest him without them.”

“Contingencies with which I am sure you could grapple successfully, Louis.”

Mr Carlyle’s bland complacency did not suggest that he, at any rate, had any doubt on that score.

“But, you know, Max, I am pledged to carry through the Vandeeming affair here in town. And--um--well, the Secretary did make a point of you being the man they relied on.”

“Oh! someone there must read the papers, Louis. But I wonder ... why they did not communicate with me direct.”

Mr Carlyle contrived to look extremely ingenuous. Even he occasionally forgot that looks went for nothing with Carrados.

“I imagine that they thought that a friendly intermediary--or something of that sort.”

“Possibly Inspector Beedel hinted to the Commissioner that you would have more influence with me than a whole Government Department?” smiled Carrados. “And so you have, Louis; so you have. If it’s your ambition to get the Government on your books you can tell your clients that I’ll take on their job!”

“By Jupiter, Max, you are a good fellow if ever there was one!” exclaimed Mr Carlyle with gentlemanly emotion. “But I owe too much to you already.”

“This won’t make it any more, then. I have another reason, quite different, for going.”

“Of course you have,” assented the visitor heartily. “You are not one to talk about patriotism, and all that, but you can’t hoodwink me with your dilettantish pose, Max, and I know that deep down in your nature there is a passionate devotion to your country----”

“Thank you, Louis,” interrupted Carrados. “It is very nice to learn that. But I am really going to Kingsmouth because there’s a man there--a curate--who has the second best private collection in Europe of autonomous coins of Thessaly.”

For a few seconds Mr Carlyle looked his unutterable feelings. When he did speak it was with crushing deliberation.

“‘Mrs Carrados,’ I shall say--if ever there is a Mrs Carrados, Max--‘Mrs Carrados, two things are necessary for your domestic happiness. In the first place, pack up your husband’s tetradrachms in a brown-paper parcel and send them with your compliments to the British Museum. In the second, at the earliest possible opportunity, exact from him an oath that he will never touch another Greek coin as long as you both live.’”

“If ever there is a Mrs Carrados,” was the quick retort, “I shall probably be independent of the consolation of Greek coins as, also, Louis, of the distraction of criminal investigation. In the meantime, what are you going to tell me about this case?”

Mr Carlyle at once became alert. He would have become absolutely professional had not Carrados tactfully obtruded the cigar-box. The digression, and the pleasant aroma that followed it, brought him back again to the merely human.

“It began, like a good many other cases, with an anonymous letter.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Carrados. “Here is a copy.”

“A copy!” The blind man ran his finger lightly along the lines and read aloud what he found there:

“A friend warns you that an attempt is being successfully made on
behalf of another Power to obtain naval information of vital
importance. You have a traitor within your gates.”

Then he crumpled up the paper and dropped it half-contemptuously into the waste-paper basket. “A copy is no use to us, Louis,” he remarked. “Indeed it is worse than useless; it is misleading.”

“That is all they had here. The original was addressed to the Admiral-Superintendent at the Kingsmouth Dockyard. This was sent up with the report. But I am assured that the other contained no clue to the writer’s identity.”

“Not even a watermark, ‘Jones, stationer, High Street, Kingsmouth’!” said Carrados dryly. “Really, Louis! Every piece of paper contains at least four palpable clues.”

“And what are they, pray?”

“A smell, a taste, an appearance and a texture. This one, in addition, bears ink, and with it all the characteristics of an individual handwriting.”

“In capitals, Max,” Mr Carlyle reminded him. “Our anonymous friend is up to that.”

“Yes; I wonder who first started that venerable illusion.”

“Illusion?”

“Certainly an illusion. Capitals, or ‘printed handwriting’ as one sees them called, are just as idiomorphic as a cursive form.”

“But much less available for comparison. How are you going to obtain a specimen of anyone’s printed handwriting for comparison?”

Carrados reflected silently for a moment.

“I think I should ask anyone I suspected to do one for me,” he replied.

Carlyle resisted the temptation to laugh outright, but mordacity lurked in his voice.

“And you imagine that the writer of this, who evidently has good reason for anonymity, will be simple enough to comply?”

“I think so; if I ask him nicely.”

“Look here, Max, I will bet you a box of any cigars you care to name----”

“Yes, Louis?”

Mr Carlyle had hesitated. He was recalling one or two things from the past, and on those occasions his friend’s unemotional face had looked just as devoid of guile as it did now.

“No, Max, I won’t bet this time, but I should like to send across a small box of Monterey Coronas for Parkinson to pack among your things. Well, so much for the letter.”

“Not quite all,” interposed Carrados. “I must have the original.”

The visitor made a note in his pocket diary.

“It shall be sent to you at once. I stipulated an absolutely free hand for you. Oh, I took a tolerably high tone! I can assure you, Max. You will find everything at Kingsmouth very pleasant, and there, of course, you will learn all the details. Here they don’t seem to know very much. I was not informed whether the Dockyard authorities had already had their suspicions aroused or whether the letter was the first hint. At all events they acted with tolerable promptness. The letter, you will see, is undated, but it was delivered on the seventeenth--last Thursday. On Friday they put their hands on a man in the construction department--a fellow called Brown. He made no fight of it when he was cornered, but although he owned up to the charge of betraying information, there was one important link that he could not supply and one that he would not. He could not tell them who the spy collecting the information was, because there was an intermediary; and he would not betray the intermediary on any terms. And, by gad! I for one can’t help respecting the beggar for that remnant of loyalty.”

“A woman?” suggested Carrados.

“Even that, I believe, is not known, but very likely you have hit the mark. A woman would explain the element of chivalry that prompts Brown’s attitude. He is under open arrest now--nobody outside is supposed to know, but of course he can’t buy an evening paper without it being noted. They are in hope of something more definite turning up. At present they have pitched their suspicions on a German visitor staying at Cliffhurst.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Max. They must fix on someone, you know. It’s expected. All the same they are deucedly nervous at this end about the outcome.”

“Did they say what Brown had given away?”

“Yes, egad! Do you know anything of the Croxton-Delahey torpedo?”

“A little,” admitted Carrados.

“What does it do?” asked Mr Carlyle, with the rather sublime air of casual interest which he attached to any subject outside his own knowledge.

“It’s rather an ingenious contrivance. It is fired like any other uncontrolled torpedo. At the end of a straight run--anything up to ten thousand yards at 55 knots with the superheated system--the diabolical creature stops and begins deliberately to slash a zigzag course over any area you have set it for. If in its roving it comes within two hundred feet of any considerable mass of iron it promptly makes for it, cuts its way through torpedo netting if any bars its progress, explodes its three hundredweight of gun-cotton and finishes its existence by firing a 24 lb. thorite shell through the breach it has made.”

“’Um,” mused Mr Carlyle, “I don’t like the weapon, Max, but I would rather that we kept it to ourselves. Well, Mr Brown has given away the plans.”

Carrados disposed of the end of his cigar and crossed the room to his open desk. From its appointed place he took a book inscribed “Engagements,” touched a few pages and scribbled a line of comment here and there. Then he turned to his guest again.

“All right. I’ll go down to Kingsmouth by the 12.17 to-morrow morning,” he said. “Now I want you to look up the following points for me and let me have the particulars before I go.”

Mr Carlyle again took out his pocket diary and beamed approvingly.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact the tenor of the replies he received influenced Carrados to make some change in his plans. Accompanied by Parkinson he left London by the appointed train on the next day, but instead of proceeding to Kingsmouth he alighted at Cliffhurst, the pretty little seaside resort some five miles east of the great dockport. After securing rooms at the Rose and Plumes--an easy enough matter in October--he directed his attendant to take him to a sheltered seat on the winding paths below the promenade and there leave him for an hour.

“Very nicely kept, these walks and shrubberies, sir,” remarked an affable voice from the other end of the bench. A leisurely pedestrian whose clothes and manner proclaimed him to be an aimless holiday-maker had sauntered along and, after a moment’s hesitation, had sat down on the same form.

“Yes, Inspector,” replied Carrados genially. “Almost up to the standard of our own Embankment Gardens, are they not?”

Detective-Inspector Tapling, of New Scotland Yard, went rather red and then laughed quietly.

“I wasn’t quite sure at first if it was you, Mr Carrados,” he apologised, moving nearer and lowering his voice. “I was to report to you here, sir, and to give you any information and assistance you might require.”

“How are you getting on?” inquired Carrados.

“We think that we have got hold of the right man, sir; but for reasons that you can guess the Chief is very anxious to have no mistake this time.”

“Muller?”

“Yes, sir. He has a furnished villa here in Cliffhurst and is very open-handed. The time he came fits in, so far as we can tell, with the beginning of the inquiries in Kingsmouth. Then, whatever his real name is, it isn’t Muller.”

“He is a German?”

“Oh yes; he’s German right enough, sir. We’ve looked up telegrams to him from Lubeck--nothing important though--and he has changed German notes in Kingsmouth. He spends a lot of time over there--says the fishing is better, but that’s all my eye, only the Kingsmouth boatmen get hold of the dockyard talk and know more of the movements than the men about here. Then there’s a lady.”

“The intermediary?”

“That’s further than we can go at the moment, but there is a lady at the furnished villa. She’s not exactly Mrs Muller, we believe, but she lives there, if you understand what I mean, sir.”

“Perfectly,” acquiesced Carrados in the same modest spirit.

“So that all the necessary conditions can be shown to exist,” concluded Tapling.

“But so far you have not a single positive fact connecting Muller with Brown?”

The Inspector admitted that he had not, but added hopefully that he was in immediate expectation of information that would enable him to link up the detached surmises into a conclusive chain of direct evidence.

“And if I might ask the favour of you, sir,” he continued, “you would be doing us a great service if you would allow us to continue our investigation for another twenty-four hours. I think that by then we shall be able to show something solid. And if you certify what we have done, that’s all to our credit, whereas if you take it out of our hands now----You see what I mean, Mr Carrados, but of course it lies entirely with you.”

Carrados assented with his usual good nature. His actual business was only to examine the evidence before the arrest was made and to guarantee that the Home Office should not be involved in another spy-scare fiasco. He knew Tapling to be a reliable officer, and he did not doubt that the line he was working was the correct one. Least of all did he wish to deprive the man of his due credit.

“I can very well put in a day on my own account,” he accordingly replied. “And so long as Muller is here there does not appear to be any special urgency. I suppose the odds are that the papers have been got away before you began to watch?”

“There is just a chance yet, we believe, sir; and the Admiralty is very keen on recovering those torpedo plans if it’s to be done. Some of these foreign spies like to keep the thing as much as possible in their own hands. There’s more credit to it, and more cash, too, at headquarters if they do. Then if it comes to a matter of touch-and-go, a letter, and especially a letter from abroad, may be stopped on the way. You will say that a man may be, for that matter, but there’s been another reason against posting valuable papers about here for the past week.”

“Of course,” assented Carrados with enlightenment. “The Suffragettes down here are out.”

“I never thought to have any of that lot helping me,” said the Inspector, absent-mindedly stroking his right shin; “but they may have turned the scale for us this time. There isn’t a posting place from a rural pillar-box to the head office at Kingsmouth that has been really safe from them. They’ve even got at the registered letters in the sorting-rooms somehow. That’s why I think there’s a chance still.”

Parkinson’s approaching figure announced that an hour had passed. Carrados and the Inspector rose to walk away in different directions, but before they parted the blind man put a question that had confronted him several times, although he had as yet given only a glancing attention to the case.

“Now that Muller has got the plans of the torpedo, Inspector, why is he remaining here?”

It was a simple and an obvious inquiry, but before he replied Inspector Tapling looked round suspiciously. Then he further reduced the distance between them and dropped his voice to a whisper.

* * * * *

St Ethelburga’s boasted the most tin-potty bell and the highest ritual of any church in Kingsmouth. Outside it resembled a brick barn, inside a marble palace, and its ministration overworked a vicar and two enthusiastic curates. It stood at the corner of Jubilee Street and Lower Dock Approach, a conjunction that should render further description of the neighbourhood superfluous.

The Rev. Byam Hosier, the senior curate, whose magnetic eloquence filled St Ethelburga’s from chancel steps to porch, lodged in Jubilee Street, and there Mr Carrados found him at ten o’clock on the following morning. The curate had just finished his breakfast, and the simultaneous correction of a batch of exercise books. He apologised for the disorder without justifying himself by explaining the cause, for instead of being a laggard Mr Hosier had already taken an early celebration, and afterwards allowed himself to be intercepted on his way back to attend to a domestic quarrel, a lost cat, and the arrangements for a funeral.

“I got your note last night, Mr Carrados,” he said, after guiding his guest to a seat, for Parkinson had been dismissed to make himself agreeable elsewhere. “I am glad to show you my small collection, and still more so to have an opportunity of thanking you for the help you have given me from time to time.”

Carrados lightly disclaimed the obligation. It was the first time the two had met, though, as the outcome of a review article, they had frequently corresponded. The clergyman went to his single cabinet, took out the top tray and put it down before his visitor on the now available table.

“Pherae,” he said.

“May I touch the surfaces?” asked the blind man.

“Oh, certainly. Pray do. I am sorry----” He did not quite know what to say before the spectacle of the blind expert, with his eyes fixed elsewhere, passing a critical touch over the details that he himself loved to gaze upon.

In this one thing the Rev. Byam was fastidious. His clothes were generally bordering on the shabby, and he allowed himself to wear boots that shocked or amused the feminine element in the first half-dozen pews of St Ethelburga’s. He might--as he frequently did, indeed--make a breakfast of weak tea, bread and butter and marmalade without any sense of deficiency, but in the matter of Greek coins his taste was exacting and his standard exact. His one small mahogany cabinet was pierced for five hundred specimens, and it was far from full, but every coin was the exquisite production of the golden era of the world’s creative art.

It did not take Carrados three minutes to learn this. Occasionally he dropped a word of comment or inquiry, but for the most part tray succeeded tray in fascinated silence.

“Still Larissa,” announced the clergyman, sliding out the last tray.

Under each coin was a circular ticket with written particulars of the specimen accompanying it. For some time Carrados took little interest in these commentaries, but presently Hosier noticed that his guest was submitting many of them to a close but quiet scrutiny.

“Excuse my asking, Mr Carrados,” he said at length, “but are you quite blind?”

“Quite,” was the unconcerned reply. “Why?”

“Because I noticed that you held some of the labels close to your eyes and I fancied that perhaps----”

“It is my way.”

“Forgive my curiosity----”

“I can assure you, Mr Hosier, that other people are much more touchy about my blindness than I am. Now will you do me a kindness? I should like a copy of the inscriptions on half-a-dozen of these gems.”

“With pleasure.” The curate discovered pen and ink and paper and waited.

“This didrachm of the nymph Larissa wearing earrings; this of Artemis and the stag; this, and this, and this.” The trays had been left displayed upon the table and Carrados’s hand selected from them with unerring precision.

Hosier took the chosen coins and noted down the legends in their bold Greek capitals. “Shall I describe the type of each as well?” he asked.

“Thank you,” assented his visitor. “If you don’t mind writing that also in capitals and not blotting I shall read it so much the easier.”

He accepted the sheet of paper and delicately touched the lettering along each line.

“I have a friend who will be equally interested in this,” he remarked, taking out his pocket-book.

The clergyman had turned to remove a tray from the table when a sheet of paper, fluttering to the ground, caught his eye. He picked it up and was returning it into the blind man’s hand when he stopped in a sudden arrest of every movement.

“Good heavens, Mr Carrados!” he exclaimed in an agitated voice, “how does this come in your possession?”

“Your note?”

“You know that it is mine?”

“Yes--now,” replied Carrados quietly. “It was sent to me by the Admiral-Superintendent of the Yard here. He wished to communicate with the writer.”

“I am bewildered at the suddenness of this,” protested the poor young man in some distress. “Let me tell you the circumstances--such at least as do not violate my promise.”

He procured himself a glass of water from the sideboard, drank half of it and began to pace the room nervously as he talked.

“On Wednesday last, after taking Evensong at the church, I was leaving the vestry when a lady stepped forward and asked if she might speak to me privately. It is a request which a clergyman cannot refuse, Mr Carrados, but I endeavoured first to find out what she required, because people frequently come to one or another of us on business that really has to do with the clerk, or the organist, or something of that sort.

“She assured me that it was a personal matter and that no other official would do.

“The lights had by this time been extinguished in the church, and doubtless the apparitor had left. I gave her my address here and asked her if she would call in ten or twenty minutes. I preferred that she should present herself in the ordinary way.

“There is no need to go into extraneous details. The unhappy lady wished to unburden her conscience by making explicit confession, and she had come to me in consequence of a sermon which she had heard me preach on the Sunday before.

“It is not expedient to weigh considerations of time or circumstance in such a case. I allowed her to proceed, and she made her confession under the seal of inviolable confidence. It involved other persons besides herself. I besought her to undo as far as possible the great harm she had done by making a full statement to the authorities, but this she was too weak--too terrified--to do. This clumsy warning of mine”--he pointed to the paper now lying on the table between them--“was the utmost concession that I could wring from her.”

He stopped and looked at his visitor with a troubled face that seemed to demand some sort of assent to the dilemma.

“You are an Englishman, Mr Hosier, and you know what this might mean in a conflict--you know that one of our most formidable weapons has been annexed.”

“My dear sir!” rapped out the distressed curate, “don’t you think that I haven’t worried about that? But behind the Englishman stands something more primitive, more just--the man. I gave my assurance as a man, and the Admiralty can go hang!”

“Besides,” he added, in petulant reaction, “the poor woman is dying, and then everyone can know. Of course it may be too late.”

“Do you mind telling me if the lady gave you the names of her accomplices?”

“How can I tell you, Mr Carrados? It may identify her in some way. I am too confounded by your unexpected appearance in the affair to know what is important and what is not.”

“It will not implicate her. I have no concern there.”

“Then, yes, she did. She gave me every detail.”

“I ask because a man is suspected and on the point of arrest. He may be innocent. I have no deeper motive, but if the one for whom she is working is not a German called, or passing as, Muller, you might have some satisfaction in exonerating him.”

The curate reflected a moment.

“He is not, Mr Carrados,” he replied decidedly. “But please don’t ask me anything more.”

“Very well, I won’t,” said Carrados, rising. “Our numismatic conversation has taken a strange turn, Mr Hosier. There is a text for you--Money at the root of everything! By the way, I can do you one trifling service.” He picked up the anonymous letter, tore it across and held it out. “You have done all you could. Burn this and then you are clear of the matter.”

“Thanks, thanks. But won’t it get you into trouble with the Admiralty?”

“I make my own terms,” replied Carrados. “Now Mr Hosier, I have been an ill-omened bird, but I had no suspicion of this when I came. The ‘long arm’ has landed us this time. Will you come and dine with me one day this week, and I promise you not a single reference to this troublesome business?”

“You are very good,” assented Hosier.

“I am at Cliffhurst----”

“Cliffhurst?” was Hosier’s quick exclamation.

“Yes, at the Rose and Plumes.”

“I--I am very sorry, Mr Carrados,” stammered the curate, “but, after all, I am afraid that I must cry off. This week----”

“If the distance takes up too much of your time, may I send a car?”

“No, no, it isn’t that--at least, of course, one has to consider time and work. Thank you, Mr Carrados; you are very kind, but, really, if you don’t mind----”

Carrados courteously accepted the refusal without further pressure. He turned the momentary embarrassment by hoping that Hosier would not fail to call on him when next in London, and the curate availed himself of the compromise to protest the pleasure that it would afford him. Parkinson was summoned and the strangely developed visit came to an end.

Parkinson doubtless found his master a dull companion on the way back. Carrados had to rearrange his ideas from the preconception which he had so far tentatively based on Inspector Tapling’s report, and he was faced by the necessity of discovering whose presence made the Rose and Plumes Hotel inexplicably distasteful to Mr Hosier just then. Only two flashes of conversation broke the journey, both of which may be taken as showing the trend of Max Carrados’s mind, and demonstrating the sound common sense exhibited by his henchman.

“It is a mistake they often make, Parkinson, to begin looking with a fixed idea of what they are going to find.”

“Yes, sir.”

And, ten minutes later:

“But I don’t know that it would be safe yet to ignore the obvious altogether.”

“No, sir,” replied Parkinson.

* * * * *

“Not guilty, my lord!”

That was the link for which Carrados had been waiting patiently each day since his visit to Kingsmouth; or, more exactly, since the sound of a voice heard in the hotel on his return had stirred a memory that he could not materialise. Parkinson had described the man with photographic exactness and still recognition was balked. Tapling, who found himself at a deadlock before the furnished villa, both by reason of his want of progress and at Carrados’s recommendation, contributed his observation, which was guardedly negative. Everyone about knew Mr Slater--“a pleasant, open-handed gentleman, with a word and a joke for all”--but no one knew anything of him, as, indeed, who should know of a leisurely bird of passage staying for a little time at a seaside hotel?

Then across the lounge rang the mock-serious repartee, and enlightenment cut into the patient listener’s brain like a flash of inspiration.

These were the three telegrams which immediately came into existence as a result of that ray, deciphered here from their code obscurity:

“_To_ GREATOREX, TURRETS, RICHMOND, SURREY.

“Extract _Times_ full report trial Henry Frankworth, convicted
embezzlement early 1906, and forward express.--CARRADOS.”

“_To_ WRATTESLEY, HOME OFFICE, WHITEHALL, S.W.

“Will you please have Lincoln authorities instructed to send me
confidential report antecedents Henry Frankworth, embezzler, native
Trudstone that county. Urgent.--WYNN CARRADOS.”

“_To_ CARLYLE, 72A BAMPTON ST., W.C.

“MY DEAR LOUIS,--Why not come down week-end talk things over?
Meanwhile make every effort discover subsequent history Henry
Frankworth convicted embezzlement Central Criminal Court early 1906.
Beedel will furnish police records. Pressing.--MAX.”

On his way upstairs a few hours later Carrados looked in at the reception office to inquire if there were any letters.

“By the by,” he remarked, after he had turned to leave, “I wonder if you happen to have a room a little--just a little--farther away from the drawing-room?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the clerk. “Does the playing annoy you? They do keep it up rather late sometimes, don’t they?”

“No, it doesn’t annoy me,” admitted Carrados; “on the contrary, I am passionately fond of it. But it tempts me into lying awake listening when I ought to be asleep.”

The young lady laughed pleasantly. It was her business to be agreeable.

“You are considerate!” she rippled. “Well, there’s the further corridor; or, of course, a floor above----”

“The floor above would do nicely. Not on the front if possible. The sea is rather noisy.”

“Second floor, west corridor.” She glanced at her keyboard. “No. 15?”

“Is that the side overlooking the----?”

“The High Street,” she prompted.

“I am such a poor sleeper,” he apologised.

“No. 21 on the other side, overlooking the gardens?” she suggested.

“I am sure that will do admirably,” he said, with the gratitude that is always so touching from the blind. “Thank you for taking so much trouble to pick it for me. Good-night.”

“I will have your things transferred to-morrow,” she nodded after him.

An hour later Mr Slater, generally the last man to leave the lounge, strolled across to the office for his key.

“No. 22, sir, isn’t it?” she hazarded, unhooking it without waiting for the number.

“Good little girl,” he assented approvingly. “What a brain beneath that fascinating aureola. Eh bien, au revoir, petite! You ought to be about snuffing the candle yourself, my dear.”

The young lady laughed just as pleasantly. It was her business to be equally agreeable to all.

* * * * *

Mr Carrados was sitting in an alcove of the lounge on the following morning when Parkinson brought him a letter. It proved to be the extract from _The Times_, written on the special typewriter. The day was bright and inviting and the room was deserted. On his master’s instruction Parkinson sat down and waited while the blind man rapidly deciphered the half-dozen sheets of typewriting.

“You have been with me to the Old Bailey several times,” remarked Carrados, as he slowly replaced the document. “Do you remember an occasion in February 1906?”

Parkinson looked unnecessarily wise, but was unable to acquiesce. Carrados gave him another guide.

“A man named Frankworth was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment for an ingenious system of theft. He had also fraudulently disposed of information to trade rivals of his employer.”

“I apprehend the circumstances now, sir.”

“Can you recall the appearance of the prisoner?”

Parkinson thought that he could, but he did not rise to the suggestion and Carrados was obliged to follow the direct line.

“Have you seen anyone lately--here in the hotel--who might be Frankworth?”

“I can’t say that I have, sir.”

“Take Mr Slater now. Shave off his beard and moustache.”

Parkinson began to look respectfully uncomfortable.

“Do you mean, sir----”

“By an effort of the imagination, Parkinson. Close your eyes and picture Mr Slater as a clean-shaven man, some years younger, standing in the dock----”

“Yes, sir. There is a distinct resemblance.”

With this Max Carrados had to be satisfied for the time. Long memory was not Parkinson’s strong point, but he had his own pre-eminent gift, and of this his master was to have an immediate example that outweighed every possible deficiency.

“Speaking of Mr Slater, sir, I noticed a curious thing that I intended to mention, as you told me to be particularly observant.”

Carrados nodded encouragingly.

“I was talking to Herbert early this morning as he cleaned the boots. He is a very bigoted Free Trader, sir, and is thinking of becoming a Mormon, and I was speaking to him about it. Presently he came to No. 22’s--Mr Slater’s. They were muddy, for Mr Slater went out for a walk last night--I saw him as he returned. But the boots that Mr Slater put out to be cleaned last night were not the boots that he went out in and got wet, although they were exactly the same make.”

“That is certainly curious,” admitted Carrados slowly. “There was only one pair put out?”

“That is all, sir; and they were not the boots that Mr Slater has worn every day since I began to notice him particularly. He always does wear the same pair, morning, noon and night.”

“Wait,” said Carrados briskly. An idea bordering on the fantastic flashed between a sentence in the report which he had just been reading and Parkinson’s discovery. He took out the sheets, ran his finger along the lines and again read--“stated that the prisoner was the son of a respectable bootmaker, and had followed the occupation himself.” “I know how accurate you are, Parkinson, but this may be of superlative importance. You see that?”

“I had not contemplated it in that light, sir.”

“But what did the incident suggest to you?”

“I inferred, sir, that Mr Slater must have had some reason for going out again after the hotel was closed.”

“Yes, that might explain half; but what if he did not?” persisted Carrados.

Parkinson wisely dismissed the intellectual problem as outside his sphere.

“Then I am unable to suggest why the gentleman cleaned his muddy boots himself and muddied his clean boots, sir.”

“Yes, that is what it comes to. He is wearing the same pair again this morning?”

“Yes, sir. The boots that were dirty at ten o’clock last night.”

“Pay particular attention to Mr Slater’s boots in future. I have transferred to No. 21, so you will have every opportunity. Talk to Herbert about Tariff Reform to-morrow morning. In the meanwhile--Are they any particular make?”

“‘Moorland hand-made waterproof,’ a heavy shooting boot, sir. Size 7. Rossiter, of Kingsmouth, is the maker.”

“In the meanwhile go to Kingsmouth and buy an identical pair. Before you go cut the sole off one of your oldest boots and bring me a piece about three inches square. Buy yourself another pair. Here is a note. Do you know which chamber-maid has charge of No. 21?”

“I could ascertain, sir.”

“It would be as well. You might buy her a bangle out of the change--if you have no personal objection to the young lady’s society. And, Parkinson----”

“Yes, sir?”

“I know you to be discreet and reliable. The work we are engaged on here is exceptionally important and equally honourable. A mistake might ruin it. That is all.”

“Thank you, sir.” Parkinson marched away with his head a little higher for the guarded compliment. It was the essence of the man’s extraordinary value to his master that while on some subjects he thought deeply, on others he did not think at all; and he contrived automatically to separate everything into its proper compartment.

“Here is what you require, sir,” he said, returning with the square of leather.

“Come across to the fireplace,” said Carrados. “There is still no one else in the lounge?”

“No, sir.”

“Who would be the last servant to see to this room at night--to leave the fire safe and the windows fastened?”

“The hall porter, sir.”