"Have you any idea about those cheques?" he demanded.
"I am afraid," the other acknowledged, "that Mr. Bookam was not very discreet. I reminded him of your advice—that the money should be passed through Sullivan—but he didn't seem to think it worth while."
"Look here, let me know the worst at once," Fischer insisted. "Do you believe that any one of those cheques was made payable to any of the men who are under arrest?"
"I am afraid," the secretary declared sadly, "that the proceeds of one were found on the person of Ed. Swindles, intact."
Fischer sat for a moment with his head buried in his hands. "That any man could have been such a fool. An organisation would have been a thousand times safer. Max Bookam was only a very worthy and industrious clothing manufacturer, with an intense love for the Fatherland and a great veneration for all her institutions. What he had done, he had done whole-heartedly but foolishly. He was a man who should never have been trusted for a moment in the game. After all, the pawns count…."
Fischer took his leave and reached his hotel a little before midnight. Already he had begun to look over his shoulder in the street. He found his rooms empty with a sense of relief, marred by one little disappointment. Nikasti was to have been there to bid him farewell— Nikasti on his way back to Japan. He ascertained from the office of the hotel that there had been no telephone message or caller. Then he turned to his correspondence, some presentiment already clutching at his strained nerves. There was a letter in a large envelope, near the bottom of the pile, addressed to him in Nikasti's fine handwriting. He tore open the envelope, and slow horror seized him as he realised its contents. A long photograph unrolled itself before his eyes. The first few words brought confusion and horror to his sense. His brain reeled. This was defeat, indeed! It was a photograph of that other autograph letter. The one which he had given to Nikasti to carry to Japan lay— gross sacrilege!—about him in small pieces. There was no other line, no message, nothing but this damning proof of his duplicity.
A kind of mental torture seized him. He fought like a caged man for some way out. Every sort of explanation occurred to him only to be rejected, every sort of subterfuge, only to be cast aside with a kind of ghastly contempt. He felt suddenly stripped bare. His tongue could serve him no more. He snatched at the telephone receiver and rang up the number for which he searched eagerly through the book.
"Is that the office of the American Steamship Company?" he asked.
"Yes."
"What time will the New York sail?"