“No; don’t condemn yourself until you have made your own inquiries. When you get back to the Embassy look around and learn the truth. Then I hope you will become convinced of the foundation of my allegations. When you are, let me know, old chap, won’t you?”
At that moment a stout, elderly man, accompanied by another a trifle his junior, who wore the button of the Legion d’Honneur in the lapel of his dress-coat, elbowed their way laboriously up to the bar.
Jack Jerningham’s quick eyes discerned them, whereupon in amazement he ejaculated in a low whisper the somewhat vulgar expression:
“Good God!”
Hubert looked up and saw old Jules Gigleux.
“What?” he asked in surprise.
“Why, look at the elder man—that old fellow with the white, close-cropped hair. Don’t you know him?” he asked in a low voice, indicating Lola’s uncle.
“Know him? Yes. He’s been up the Nile with us. He is a Frenchman named Gigleux.”
“Gigleux!” echoed his friend. “By Gad! and a rather good alias. No, my dear fellow. Look at him well. He is the greatest and most cunning secret agent Germany has ever possessed—the arch-enemy of England, the Chief of the German Secret Service—an Italian whose real name is Luigi Ghelardi, though he goes by a dozen aliases. It is he who controls the whole service of German espionage throughout the world, and he is the unscrupulous chief of the horde of spies who are infesting the Eastern counties of England and preparing for ‘the day.’”
At that second the man referred to glanced across and nodded pleasant recognition with Waldron, though he apparently had no knowledge of his companion.