As there was no news of him on the following morning, Heideck felt almost certain that the affair had turned out disastrously for Penurot. However, for the moment, he could not stop to investigate the young man’s whereabouts.
He was informed by the Lieutenant-Colonel that Brandelaar, whose vessel actually lay off Ternenzen, had been arrested with his crew, examined, and liberated during the course of the night, as had been agreed between the two officers.
Heideck now set out for Ternenzen to give Brandelaar the information for Admiral Hollway that had been collected at his office, together with the private information that was of such importance to him.
At last, having paid Brandelaar a thousand francs on account, Heideck also gave him the letter to Edith, with careful instructions as to its delivery. The skipper, whose zeal for the cause of Germany was now undoubtedly honourable, repeatedly promised to carry out his orders conscientiously and to the best of his power.
On returning to Antwerp at noon, Heideck found a communication at his office from the police to the effect that Camille Penurot’s body had been found in one of the harbour basins, stabbed in several places in the breast and neck. A search for the assassins had been immediately set on foot, but up to the present no trace of them had been discovered.
XXIX
A WOMAN’S TREACHERY
According to the agreement with Heideck, Brandelaar, on his return from Dover, was to put in at Flushing, and the Major had instructed the guardships at the mouth of the West Schelde to allow the smack to pass unmolested without detention. But he waited for the skipper from day to day in vain. The weather could not have been the cause of his delay; certainly it had not been too bad for a man of Brandelaar’s daring. A moderate north wind had been blowing nearly the whole time, so that a clever sailor could have easily made the passage from Dover to Flushing in a day.
Consequently, other reasons must have kept him in England. Heideck began to fear that either his knowledge of men, so often tried, had deceived him on this occasion, or that Brandelaar had fallen a victim to some act of imprudence in England.