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 shipbuilding 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. Wireless 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 anything 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. You may not know it, but I have my own Yard men among your messengers here in this building, 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 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 wilt away like a fair mirage. "The secret will get out, our plans will fail, and MY Administration, my beautiful Administration, will have to stand the racket. How shall I defend myself in the House?"
"That won't matter much to the country," put in Jacquetot bluntly.
"What matters, is that we should do everything possible to keep the
secret in spite of all the inherent difficulties. Sit down, Mr.
Dawson, and do some hard thinking."
"I prefer to stand, my lord. When I want to think I do a bit of sentry-go."
"So do I!" exclaimed the First Lord. "All my most famous speeches were composed while I walked up and down my dressing-room before my—" He broke off hastily, but as neither Jacquetot nor Dawson were listening, he might have completed the sentence without revealing the secrets of his looking-glass.
"May I speak my mind, my lords?" asked Dawson.