“Arrest ’em? Arrest ’em? Of course, we can arrest ’em. But what’s the use? They’re all small fry, and we have to keep out a few lines baited with minnows to catch the Tritons. None of ’em can do any harm: we watch ’em much too closely for that. Once you’ve located your spy, the battle’s won. It’s when he—or it may be a she—is running loose, that I get peeved!”
The Chief sprang impatiently to his feet and strode across the smoking-room, which was all but empty by this time, to get a match from a table. He resumed his seat with a grunt of exasperation.
“I can’t see light, Okewood!” he sighed, shaking his head.
“But is this all you’ve got against Nur-el-Din?” asked Desmond.
“No,” answered the other slowly, “it isn’t. If it were, I need not have called you in. We would have interned or deported her. No, we’ve traced back to her a line leading straight from the only member of the new organization we have been able to lay by the heels.”
“Then you’ve made an arrest?”
The Chief nodded.
“A fortnight ago... a respectable, retired English business man, by name of Basil Bellward... taken with the goods on him, as the saying is...”
“An Englishman, by Jove!”
“It’s hardly correct to call him an Englishman, though he’s posed as an English business man for so long that one is almost justified in doing so. As a matter of fact, the fellow is a German named Wolfgang Bruhl and it is my belief that he was planted in this country at least a dozen years ago solely for the purpose of furnishing him with good, respectable credentials for an emergency like this.”