The lock was a simple one, and John had it open in a moment. Then the disappointment that had been growing on him intensified, for in the box was nothing but Mrs. Beecher Monmouth's costly sables laid away for the summer. A reek of camphor assailed his nostrils from the folded furs. He was about to close the box, when the idea occurred to him to run his hand down the sides. A moment later he was glad of this impulse, for from the bottom of the tin he drew up a small, strong-looking cash-box.
He rattled the box, and was able to detect a faint rustle from within. Carrying the dispatch case, which was something under a foot in length, he went into the bedroom. Once again he seated himself on the purple eiderdown and tried all his keys. None of them fitted the dispatch box, which was protected by an unassailable Chubb lock.
John contemplated this lock for some minutes with an unfavourable eye, then he took out a heavy steel tool he had brought with him. It took him less than two minutes to wrench open the lid. Within the box, completely filling its interior, were neatly folded and tightly packed letters and papers.
John's interest quickened mightily as, opening one of the letters, he discovered it to be in German.
The note-paper was of the flimsy description, almost tissue paper, in fact. John, examining it closely, observed with a certain degree of interest that the paper had been folded very small indeed, evidently for facility in transmission.
As he sat on the edge of the bed, with the open box on his knee, and this letter in his hand, he swept Mrs. Beecher Monmouth's large and expensively furnished room with his glance. There was a deep silence in the room, and between the rise and the fall of the traffic noises outside, John could hear the light ticking of the little ivory and silver clock on the dressing-table. He was not occupied with the silence, however, but with the contents of the letter, which he read rapidly, eagerly, and with swiftly augmented interest. Written purposely small in a firm, foreign hand, the missive, which was to Mrs. Beecher Monmouth, ran, in German:
"DARLING ALICE,
"Your loving letter reached me only yesterday, and I am hastening to answer it by the usual channels. I am still jealous. You tell me your husband is very old, but one of the solaces to my captivity here is the English newspapers, which we are allowed to read, and yesterday, in one of the picture papers, I observed Mr. Beecher Monmouth's photograph. He is not so old as you pretend, and though his face assures me that he will never win your heart, yet still I am jealous. It makes me laugh to think of you as the wife of an English politician, a member of their stupid Parliament! I wonder if in society you ever meet the Duke of Thule and Lord Harrisgrove. I recall our beautiful happiness in Washington together. You loved me then, I believe, more than you do now."
The letter ended with expressions of endearment, and was signed "Kurt von Morgen."
As John read the signature his lips tightened. In great haste he ran his eye over the handwriting of at least a score of other letters, each one of them in the same handwriting, that of Kurt von Morgen, a German Cuirassier officer, a young aristocrat who had been captured on the Western Front six months earlier. He knew that Count Kurt von Morgen was a prisoner in the —— camp for officers. And as he handled the flimsy sheets of paper he wondered consumedly how the young man had managed to convey these letters to Mrs. Beecher Monmouth.