Chapter Sixteen.
The Catspaw.
Some weeks had passed.
Jack Sainsbury had not reappeared at Bow Street, the authorities having decided, so serious was the charge and so important the evidence, that the trial should take place by court-martial and in camera.
Therefore the prisoner spent day after day in his narrow cell at Brixton Prison, full of fierce, angry resentment at the false charge made against him, and full of anxiety as to how Elise was bearing up beneath the tragic blow which had fallen upon them both.
He saw no one save Charles Pelham, his counsel, who now and then visited him. But even his adviser was entirely in the dark as to the exact evidence against his client. In the meantime the truth was that the Intelligence Department at Whitehall had sent an agent over to Holland to inquire into the bona fides of the Insurance Company whose offices were supposed to be in the Kalverstraat, in Amsterdam, and had discovered that though the “office” was run by highly respectable persons, the latter were undoubtedly Germans who had come to Holland just before the war. Every inquiry made by the Department revealed further proof of the accused’s guilt. Indeed, the astute Colonel who was the titular head of the Department had had Mr Charlesworth up at the War Office and thanked him personally for exposing what he had declared to be “a most serious case of espionage.”
Truly the fetters were gradually being forged upon the innocent young fellow languishing within Brixton Prison.
In complete ignorance of either the exact charge, or the identity of those who made it, Jack lived on day by day, full of the gravest apprehensions. The whole affair seemed to be one great, hideous nightmare. What would old Dan Shearman, never very well disposed towards him, think of him now? He recollected that strange anonymous letter which Elise had received. Who could possibly have sent it? A friend, without a doubt. Yet who was that secret friend? When would his identity be revealed?
He wondered if the person who had written that warning to his well-beloved would, when he knew of his arrest, come forward and expose the dastardly plot against him? Would he rescue him, now that he was in deadly peril?
With chagrin, too, he remembered how he had treated Elise’s fears with such silly unconcern. He had never dreamed of the real gravity of the situation until he found himself in the hands of the police, with that scandalous and disgraceful charge hanging over his head. The whole thing was so amazing, and so utterly bewildering, that at times he felt, as he paced that narrow, dispiriting cell, that he must go mad.