"And," said Fuller, excitedly, "when he came to give the paper to Dr. Morse, he gave the emblem and all."
"Exactly. And judging from Dr. Morse's lack of light afterward, the elder Drevenoff said nothing about the paper itself. Of course he had an object in entrusting the scapular to the Englishman; this was, doubtless, that it be handed on to some third person, unknown to us.
"Then the Japanese government somehow got wind of the matter; and Okiu, their most acute agent, was assigned to secure the document. Like most artists, Okiu believes, so it seems, in preparing his material before he sets about using it; and this process in his hands has had a peculiarly Oriental tinge. True to his racial instinct his methods took an insidious, indirect form, a sort of preliminary torture, as it were, and this accounts for the series of enigmatic sketches with which Dr. Morse was persecuted during the last weeks of his life."
"But," said Fuller, somewhat at loss, "just how does all this assure you that Miss Corbin now has the paper?"
"I am coming to that," said Ashton-Kirk. "You recall, I suppose, what I told you regarding the scapulars, their different origins, devices and colors."
"Yes."
"There is one made of scarlet cloth—the 'Scapular of the Passion.' This is the one affected by Colonel Drevenoff; for it was one of this type which Miss Corbin took from its hiding-place. My lens showed me some fine scarlet strands adhering to some fragments of wax at the mouth of the candlestick; and as if this were not enough, I also saw the impression of a row of stitching, such as runs along the scapular's edge, upon a deposit of wax at the bottom of the socket."
"It seems incredible to me," said Fuller, "that a girl of Miss Corbin's sort should have a hand in an affair like this. But then," with a shake of the head, "I suppose her love for this fellow Warwick accounts for it. Many a man has been ruined by love of an unworthy woman, and many a woman, no doubt, by love of an unworthy man."
But to all appearances the secret agent did not follow these moralizings with any great attention. The big lamps upon the car threw their long white rays along Berkley Street; and while his mind was apparently engaged upon other things, the eyes of Ashton-Kirk followed the stretch of illuminated space to the end. Now he got out, and said to the chauffeur: