"Pray absolve me," said the Admiral quickly, "from an apparent indiscretion. Doctor Bersonin is no longer in the Japanese service. His contract expired at noon to-day. It will not be renewed. As one of my Government I speak to you, as the representative of your Government, concerning a private individual whose acts are in the purview of us both. The circumstances are extraordinary, but I think the occasion justifies this conversation."
He rang a bell sharply and his private secretary entered. "Bring me," he said in Japanese, "report number eleven of Lieutenant Ishida Hetaro."
When it was brought, he turned to a leaf underscored scored with red. "Your Excellency," he said, "interested me profoundly this evening by the account of the disappearance of your dog. I am going to ask Mr. Daunt—who reads Japanese so fluently—to give a running translation of this."
Daunt took the manuscript—as perfectly executed as an inscription in Uncial Greek—and began to read. As he translated, his breath came more quickly, and the Ambassador leaned forward across the table. Yet the words chronicled nothing more than the curious disappearance from the laboratory of a tiny song-bird—and a steel pen-rest. The close of the narrative drew an exclamation from the Ambassador's lips. For it told of feathery sprays of reddish-brown powder on the expert's desk, and he seemed to see himself, his study lamp in his hand, bending over curious whorls of dust on his own piazza.
"May I ask," said the Admiral, "whether the episode of the dog suggested to Your Excellency the possibility that your caller might himself be able to solve the mystery of the animal's disappearance?"
The Ambassador's reply came slowly, but with deliberate emphasis:
"It did. The more so, from our previous conversation. In my study I have the model of a Dreadnaught. We were discussing this, and the doctor described the fighting machine of the future—an atomic engine which should utilize some newly discovered law of molecular action, a machine that might be carried in a single hand, to which a battle-ship would be, as he expressed it, 'mere silly shreds of steel.' He spoke, I thought, with a strange confidence that seemed almost unbalanced. In connection with the conversation, the later incident, I confess, left a deep impression. Yet the idea it suggested was so incredible that I have never spoken of it to any one before."
"Suppose," said the Admiral, "that the man we are discussing has actually constructed such a machine. What possible connection can there be between that and a confidence in some near event which will lower Japan's credit in the eyes of the world?"
Before the Ambassador replied there was the sound of voices outside—a sudden commotion and a woman's agitated protestations. The secretary came in hurriedly and whispered to the Admiral. A door slammed in the hall, there was the sound of a short struggle, and a girl burst into the room. She threw herself at the Admiral's feet, panting broken sentences. Her kimono was torn and muddied, her blue-black hair was loosened, and her face white and pitifully working.
A man had darted after her—he was the Admiral's aide. He grasped her arm. "She has been at the Department," he said in English, with a glance at the visitors. "They detained her there, but she got away. They have telephoned a warning that she might attempt to see you."