"I see," I replied. "Morano had a German mother."
I was interested. There might be nothing in it, of course. A noble of Spain might have a German mother and still not intrigue for the Germans against the owners of Gibraltar. But no sane man would take a bet about it.
"The point is," said Slingsby, "I am pretty sure that is not the card which he sent in to me when he came to ask about a launch. We will go straight to the office and make sure."
By the time we got there we were both somewhat excited, and we searched feverishly in the drawers of Slingsby's writing-table.
"I shouldn't be such an ass as to throw it away," he said, turning over his letters. "No! Here it is!" and a sharp exclamation burst from his lips.
"Look!"
He laid the card he had stolen side by side with the card which he had just found, and between the two there was a difference--to both of us a veritable world of difference. For from the second card the "y Goltz," the evidence that Morano was half-German, had disappeared.
"And it's not engraved," said Slingsby, bending down over the table. "It's just printed--printed in order to mislead us."
Slingsby sat down in his chair. A great hope was bringing the life back to his tired face, but he would not give the reins to his hope.
"Let us go slow," he said, warned by the experience of a hundred disappointments. "Let us see how it works out. Morano comes to Gibraltar and makes a prolonged stay in a hotel. Not being a fool, he is aware that I know who is in Gibraltar and who is not. Therefore he visits me with a plausible excuse for being in Gibraltar. But he takes the precaution to have this card specially printed. Why, if he is playing straight? He pretends he wants a launch, but he is really devoting himself to aviation. Is it possible that the Count Morano, not forgetting Goltz, knows exactly how the good Peiffer spent the six hours we can't account for, and what his little plan is?"