“H’m! Yes! I don’t think,” commented Cleek reflectively. “It won’t wash, that theory; no, decidedly it won’t wash. Pardon? Oh, no, Sir Charles, I am not casting any doubt upon the telegraph operator’s statement of the manner in which he received the message; it is his judgment that is at fault, not his veracity. Of course, there have been cases—very rare ones, happily—of one wire automatically tapping another through, as he suggested, there being a break and an overlapping of the broken wire on to the sound one; but in the present instance there isn’t a ghost of a chance of such a thing having happened. In other words, Sir Charles, it is as unsound in theory as it is false in fact. Mr. Narkom has been telling me on the way here that the operator accounted for the sudden starting of the message to the falling of a storm-snapped wire upon an uninjured one, and for its abrupt cessation to the slipping off of that broken wire under the influence of the strong gale. Now, as we entered the town and proceeded through it, I particularly noted the fact that no broken wires were anywhere visible, nor was there sight or sign of men being engaged in repairing one.”
“Ah, yes,” agreed Sir Charles, a trifle dubiously, “that may be quite so, Mr. Cleek; but, if you will pardon my suggesting it, is there not the possibility of a flaw in your reasoning upon that point? The wire in question may not have been located in that particular district through which you were travelling.”
“I don’t think there is any chance of my having made an error of that sort, Sir Charles,” replied Cleek, smiling. “Had I been likely to do so, our friend the telegraph operator would have prevented it. He recognized at once that the communication was coming over the wire from the dockyard, I am told; and I have observed that every one of the dockyard wires is intact. I fancy when we come down to the bottom of it we shall discover that it was not the dockyard wire which ‘tapped’ a message from some other, but that the dockyard wire was being ‘tapped’ itself, and that the storm, causing a momentary interruption in the carrying on of that ‘tapping’ process, allowed a portion of the message to slip past and continue to the wire’s end—the telegraph office.”
“Good lud! Then in that case——”
“In that case, Mr. Narkom, there can be no shadow of a doubt that that message was sent by somebody in this house—and over the dockyard’s own private wire.”
“But how, Mr. Cleek—in the name of all that is wonderful, how?”
“Ah, that is the point, Sir Charles. I think we need not go into the matter of who is at the bottom of the whole affair, but confine ourselves to the business of discovering how the thing was done, and how much information has already gone out to the enemy. I fancy we may set our minds at rest upon one point, however, namely, the identity of the person whose hand supplied the drawing found upon the body of the drowned man. That hand was a woman’s; that woman, I feel safe in saying, was Sophie Borovonski, professionally known to the people of the underworld as ‘La Tarantula.’”
“I never heard of her, Mr. Cleek. Who is she?”
“Probably the most beautiful, unscrupulous, reckless, dare-devil spy in all Europe, Sir Charles. She is a Russian by birth, but owns allegiance to no country and to no crown. Together with her depraved brother Boris, and her equally desperate paramour, Nicolo Ferrand, she forms one of the trio of paid bravos who for years have been at the beck and call of any nation despicable enough to employ them; always ready for any piece of treachery or dirty work, so long as their price is paid—as cunning as serpents, as slippery as eels, as clever as the devil himself, and as patient. We shall not go far astray, gentlemen, if we assert that the lady’s latest disguise was that of Miss Greta Hilmann.”
“Good God! Young Beachman’s fiancée?”