He carefully transferred what remained of it to an envelope, in order to have his conclusions verified and the exact nature of the solvent determined by expert analysis; but he really needed no such corroboration. He was fully satisfied that the demolition of the message must have been effected in the way he assumed.
With so much settled, though, he seemed in no way relieved. Indeed, the frown of perplexity on his forehead grew deeper, and, seated there before his desk, he fell into a brown study.
Why, he thought, should Schilder have gone to so much trouble to get rid of this note, when he could so easily have supported his denial of writing it by the simple expedient of using another machine? As he himself had said to Grail, it would be quite a job, without other clews, to trace, among all the hundreds of machines in a city like Brantford, the particular one on which a specific communication was written.
“No,” the adjutant said aloud, fishing from his pocket the half-smoked cigarette he had found at the threshold of the foundry office, and, surveying it with a decisive nod, “I can’t be so far off the track. This new complication simply means that the trail is a bit more involved than I thought. However”—he shrugged his shoulders with returning resentment—“that is something for the bunch of wiseacres down the row to work out. I’m done with the whole business.” And once more he drew a sheet of paper toward him to indite his resignation.
With his pen dipped in the ink, he hesitated. There came a natural reluctance to quit in this way under fire. The fresh developments he had unearthed, too, served as a challenge to his ingenuity. He had a well-defined theory to account for the disappearance of the colonel, and, after his first anxiety at Schilder’s office, had not entertained any serious alarm as to the outcome. It was, he believed, merely a bold attempt on the part of some of the foreign spies who had been hanging around the post of late to obtain information in regard to the experiments in progress there. They must have become aware of the colonel’s habit of carrying home with him at night the reports made to him, in order that he might digest them at his leisure. Since the coup had failed, however, Colonel Vedant having no papers with him that evening, and being the last person in the world to divulge under duress or otherwise any official secrets, Grail felt satisfied that the captive would be released just as soon as those responsible for the outrage were safe beyond the reach of retribution.
He had not really credited Schilder with any hand in the affair. On that one point, at least, he was agreed with Lieutenant Hemingway, regarding the German merely as a rather thick-headed dupe who had unwittingly allowed his establishment to be used as a theater for the enterprise.
Now, however, with the seeming assurance that this decoy message must have come from the typewriter at the foundry, he began to wonder if he had not been taking too much for granted. One was certainly justified in believing that either the manager or his stenographer must have had knowledge of the writing of the note.
“Suppose,” Grail speculated, “the assumption I’ve been going on is a mistake? By Jove, I’m not infallible, and I’ve got no proof to support me—that is, nothing you could call real proof. Suppose, then, that there’s more to this job than I’ve been willing to concede, and that the old colonel is actually in danger? Have I got the right, merely from personal pique, to stand from under and leave the old boy to the mercy of a set of bunglers like Appleby and his crew?”
While he hesitated, his glance happened to fall on the pen he still held between his fingers, which he had picked up from the desk at random. It was a gold one, belonging to the colonel—a gift from his daughter, Meredith, as was shown by the tiny plate affixed to the handle, with the inscription: “Merry Christmas. M. L. V.”
Before the adjutant’s mind rose suddenly the vision of the fair-haired, lovely girl, so devotedly attached to her father. He knew what this affair would mean to her, how deeply she would be affected, whether there were any actual menace in the situation or not. He laid down his pen, and, picking up the form of resignation he had drafted, tore it across, and dropped it into the wastebasket.