Strange nodded. The saloon door opened into the cockpit, and the cabin roof was the deck of the after-part of the Boulotte. They climbed by a little ladder out of the cockpit. It was twelve o'clock on a night of full moon.
"Look, sir," said Shawe.
The English boat had sailed that afternoon. The starboard side of its neighbour was now revealed. Strange looked through his glasses and he saw. Over the bows of that tramp steamer at midnight a man was suspended on a plank, and he was painting a broad, perpendicular, red streak.
Strange thought over his discovery lying on his back in the saloon. Distinguishing marks on a row of ships chartered by a German--there was just one explanation for them! Strange did not even whisper it to John Shawe, but he went ashore the next morning and called upon the British Consul.
His card was taken into a room where two men were speaking. At once the conversation stopped, and it was not resumed. There was not a whisper, nor the sound of any movement. Strange had a picture in his mind of two men with their heads together staring at his card and exchanging an unspoken question. Then the clerk appeared again.
"Mr. Taylor will see you with pleasure," he said.
As Strange entered the room a slim, elderly, indifferent gentleman, seated at a knee-hole table, gazed vaguely at him through his spectacles and offered him a chair.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Strange?" he asked, and since Strange hesitated, he turned towards his companion.
"This is Major Slingsby," said the Consul. "He will not be in your way."
Major Slingsby, a square, short, rubicund man of forty, with the face of a faun, bowed, and, without moving from his chair, seemed, nevertheless, to remove himself completely from the room.