"Admiral Timworth has been notified by wireless from Paris that you have important communications to make to him," began the Captain. "I will not waste your time or the Admiral's in questioning you here. You will come with me to the fleet commander's quarters. The Admiral is awaiting you."
Admiral Thomas Timworth, seated at his desk, and with his flag lieutenant standing by, greeted his callers with exceeding briskness.
"Gentlemen," he said, "time presses, and we must dispense with formalities. Ensign Darrin, I am advised by the Ambassador at Paris of the importance of your news, but he does not tell me what the news is."
"Its importance, sir, depends on whether the evidence I have to present supports the guess I have made as to the nature of the plot that has been planned against the peace and safety of Great Britain and our own country."
As Dave spoke he produced from an inner pocket the sheet of paper dropped by Gortchky, that he had picked up in the Rue d'Ansin.
"This piece of paper, sir," Darrin continued, passing it to the fleet commander, "is one that I saw Emil Gortchky drop from a packet of several papers that he took from his pocket at night on one of the worst streets in the slums of Paris."
Admiral Timworth scanned the paper, then read it aloud. It was a receipted bill, made out in the name of one unknown to those present, though perhaps an alias for Gortchky himself. The bill was for a shipment of storage batteries. At the bottom of the sheet was a filled-in certificate signed by a French government official, to the effect that the batteries had been shipped into Italy "for laboratory purposes of scientific research." Just below this statement was an official Italian certificate of approval, showing that the batteries had been admitted into Italy. In time of war, with the frontier guarded tenfold more vigilantly than in ordinary times, such certificates are vitally necessary to make shipments from France into Italy possible.
"In other words, sir," Dave went on eagerly, when the fleet commander scanned his face closely, "it needed some very clever underhand work, very plausibly managed, to make it possible to buy those batteries in France and to secure their admittance into Italy."
"Why?" quizzed Admiral Timworth, as though he did not know the answer himself.
"Because, sir," Dave went on keenly, full of professional knowledge of the subject, "these batteries are the best that the French make for use aboard submarines."