“You have referred to the swarm of spies for that other government, who are now in the city, presumably for the sole purpose of watching you. How many of them do you know, or, how many of them have you knowledge about?”
“Just an even dozen.”
“Have you reason to believe that there are more than that number here?”
“There may be another dozen, or a score more of them, for all I know.”
“How could they, or any of them, discover the existence of the papers in the first place?”
“Merely by conjecture; but it was a natural conclusion. They must know that it has been necessary, during all these years since I have been engaged on the matter, to keep very careful data. My memory could not be depended upon in a matter so vital. Hence, it has been a perfectly natural assumption that such papers existed. The thing was, to discover the hiding place—and it was discovered.”
“Have you reason to suppose that any other effort than this one has even been made to steal the papers?”
“Certainly. There have been seven or eight attempts during the ten years, or, rather, during the last seven of them; all but one during the last five.”
“What was done at those attempts?”
“Oh, burglars have entered my house. Thieves of the sneak-thief order have ransacked my rooms at one time and another, notwithstanding my watchfulness. A box at a safe-deposit institution was opened through subterfuge—but nothing was taken from it, and I would not have discovered that strange hands had been inside it, had not the manager mentioned something about the man I had sent there.”