Halkett, now thoroughly interested, looked keenly at Warner through the thin haze of his pipe.
"These three agents," continued Warner, "were certainly in close communication with the men who have been following you. And at least one of those men was seated at the table directly behind you when Wildresse's thugs tried to frisk you for documents. So you see that Wildresse, prodded by the French secret police, and these provocative agents, prodded by the people who are following you, who, in turn, are spurred by the German Government, were all playing at cross purposes, but with you as a common objective. A fine nest of intrigue I led you into when I took you to the Cabaret de Biribi! I'm terribly sorry, Halkett. But I believe that some good has come out of that mess—a fragment of a letter, written in German, which Philippa gave me in the meadow this afternoon.
"She found it under the wrecked table behind you. Nobody has seen it except myself and Philippa; and the child cannot read much German. But, studying it and seeing your name in the letter, she was clever enough to bring it to me. Here it is." He laid it on the table under the Englishman's eyes.
While Halkett remained absorbed in his translation, Warner paced the garden, deeply occupied with his own uneasy cogitations. After a little while Halkett spoke to him in an altered voice, and he turned and came swiftly back to the arbor.
The Englishman, looking up, said gravely:
"Concerning myself, there seems to remain now nothing worth concealing from you.... Perhaps you had better know the truth. I happen to be an officer temporarily serving with the Intelligence Department; I had just been assigned to duty in New York when the Harkness shell was stolen. The general alarm went out. Gray, a brother officer, and I chanced to stumble on evidence which sent us aboard an Antwerp steamer. Our birds were aboard. We pulled every string available, and, passing over the details of the affair, he and I managed to recover the drawings, specifications, and formula which had been stolen. Some of these papers are in that envelope.
"Every German agent in Europe knows we have them. My Government, for some reason or other, instructs me to remain here for the present. As Gray and I are known, doubtless somebody will appear and take the drawings out of our hands, because the chances are that I'd be murdered before I reached Calais. That is the situation, Warner."
"Has Gray any of the drawings?"
"He has."
"I understand."