"It will be useful when we come to stop his activities," answered Dacent Smith. "In the meantime its discovery by Sims very nearly resulted in your career coming to a sudden end. You can imagine the situation, Treves," he went on, "if that letter had arrived at Brooke when you were in Voules's house. For their own sakes, Voules and the others would never have dared to let you go. However, the letter never reached Voules, for Sinclair had it out of the locked bag at the fort five minutes after Sims deposited it there."
"It's a lucky thing for me," John said, handing back the letter to his Chief, "that Sinclair acted the way he did."
"Devilish lucky, Treves." Dacent Smith rose, placed the letter in a drawer in his desk and returned to his seat at the hearth.
"Now, Treves, as to Voules. Who is he?"
"He is some one in authority," answered John. "There is no doubt of that whatever."
"What is his appearance?"
"He is a heavily-built, bullet-headed man, between fifty and sixty. I should judge him to be used to exercising autocratic authority over others. When I reached Rollo Meads there were also present in the house two Germans, who gave me the impression of being naval officers. The fourth member of the party was Captain Cherriton, whose real name is Rathenau, as I discovered owing to the fact that they spoke German, which Cherriton believes I don't understand."
John continued and detailed fully his interview with Voules. He described his receipt of the cocaine tabloids from Conrad and his exhibition of the bogus five little wounds on his wrist, which had convinced Voules that he was a victim of the drug habit. When he had concluded Dacent Smith's lips tightened.
"You acted very shrewdly, Treves. I will see that Voules and his little party are kept under observation. From your description, I can tell you exactly who Voules is, Treves," he said. "We have suspected his identity for some time. Until two months ago Voules was General von Kuhne, in command of a corps of the Fifteenth Army. He is a Badenser, born and reared in Constance. Our investigation department informs me that he is credited by the enemy with great ability. In character he is instinctively aggressive; a fighter imbued through and through with the offensive spirit. It is to General von Kuhne that we owe our present awkward predicament on the South Coast. Outwardly nothing is wrong, but our department knows that Germany is preparing a heavy blow. We are contending against something new, big, and masterful; something that has been arranged and planned for months. How far General von Kuhne's plans have matured I do not yet know. We are so far, Treves, only groping towards knowledge. My reports tell me that at least eight forts on the South Coast are being subtly tampered with in one way or another. You have seen yourself the masterly manner in which Sims managed to work his will at Heatherpoint.
"Sims's dossier," he went on, "reached me in full only to-night, and is a further instance of an effective German trick. Sims's real name is Steinbaum. He is a Hamburg Jew, who emigrated to America in 1912. We cannot trace him from then until 1915, when, with the German naval attaché at Washington, Captain Boy Ed, he made an attempt to blow up the Pittsburg bridge works. He escaped the American police, and vanished. The next step in his career was when he landed at Liverpool from America. He was already a German spy, and enlisted in our army under the name of Sims, a baker by trade."