“He was, when I came along to you.”
Trustram thanked him, and, a few moments later, was walking down one of the long corridors in the new building of the Admiralty overlooking St. James’s Park, bearing the deciphered dispatch from the enemy in his hand.
“The artful skunk!” he muttered to himself. “Who would have credited such a thing! But it’s that confounded woman, I suppose—the woman of whom poor Jerrold entertained such grave suspicions. What is the secret of it all, I wonder? I’ll find out—if it costs me my life! How fortunate that I should have suspected, and been able to test the leakage of information, as I have done!”
Just before midnight a rather hollow-eyed, well-dressed young man was seated in Mrs Kirby’s pretty little drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens. The dark plush curtains were drawn, and against them the big bowl of daffodils stood out in all their artistic beauty beneath the electric-light. His hostess was elaborately dressed, as was her wont, yet with a quiet, subdued taste which gave her an almost aristocratic air. She posed as a giddy bridge-player, a theatre and night-club goer; a woman who smoked, who was careless of what people thought, and who took drugs secretly. That, however, was only her mask. Really she was a most careful, abstemious, level-headed woman, whose eye was always directed towards the main chance of obtaining information which might be of use to her friend Lewin Rodwell, and his masters abroad.
Both were German-born. The trail of the Hun was over them—that Teuton taint of a hopeful world-power which, being inborn, could never be eradicated.
“Well?” she was asking, as she lolled artistically in the silk-covered easy chair in her pretty room, upholstered in carnation pink. “So you can’t see him till to-morrow? That’s horribly unfortunate. I’m very disappointed,” she added pettishly.
“No,” replied the young man, who, fair-haired and square-jawed, was of distinctly German type. “I’m sorry. I tried my best, but I failed.”
“H’m. I thought you were clever enough, Carl. But it seems that you failed,” and she sighed wearily.
“You know, Molly, I’d do anything for you,” replied the young fellow, who was evidently of quite superior class, for he wore his well-cut evening coat and soft-fronted dress-shirt with the ease of one accustomed to such things. And, if the truth were told, he would have been recognised by any of the clerks in the bureau of the Savoy Hotel as one of their most regular customers at dinner or supper.
“I know that, Carl,” replied the handsome woman impatiently. “But, you see, I had made all my arrangements. The information is wanted hourly in Berlin. It is most urgent.”