"Alfred's look was a menace.
"'You will come,' said he, in a low voice. 'Consider! If you refuse, at the end of five minutes the police will have unmasked you!'...
"There was nothing else to be done. I knew this Intelligence Department already, by reputation. Alfred had spoken to me about it. It was a vast suite of rooms on the first floor of a middle-class house, where a number of men in civilian clothes were at work. They all bore the military stamp. We had to wait in a large room filled with draughtsmen and typewriters, and on the wall hung a map, on a huge scale, of the frontier of the Vosges.
"Alfred sent in his name.
"A few minutes afterwards we were ushered into an office. A big man, seated behind a table heaped with bundles of papers, scrutinised us over his spectacles: he was bald, and wore a thick square-cut fair beard. He examined the photographs without a word, threw them carelessly on a set of shelves, and took from his drawer ten louis in French money, which he counted out to me. Of any document in exchange there was, of course, no question! I thought everything was finished, and I was preparing to leave this abominable place when the big man put his hand on my arm. It was Major Schwartz himself, the chief of the spy system there—I learned that later. He said to me in very correct French, with hardly a trace of accent to betray his origin:
"'Corporal Vinson, we have paid you lavishly for information of no value, but you will have to serve us better than that, and we shall continue to treat you well.'
"I thought I should have fainted when I heard my name pronounced by this man. It was clear he already knew my rank and name.... He knew much more than that—as the conversation which followed let me see. He informed me that he wished to obtain a complete statement of the organisation of the dirigibles and aeroplanes; he must have the characteristics of all the apparatus; a list of the Flying Service Corps: he exacted even more confidential information still—where the aviators and the aircraft were to be moved if mobilisation took place—the whole bag of tricks, in fact!"
"And," asked Fandor, hesitating a little, "you have ... supplied him with all this?"
In a voice so low as to be barely audible, and blushing to the roots of his hair, Vinson confessed:
"I supplied it all!"