A month passed. The reports I received from Madame Gabrielle, working inside the house, and from the painstaking Aubert, who let nothing outside escape him, were full of interest.
Mr Easterbrook, formerly Herr Essendine Estbruck, native of Frankfort, remained entirely unsuspicious that he was under the eye of one of the keenest secret agents in Europe. It was important that he should remain in ignorance, and I prepared a little plan which I felt sure would be so completely reassuring to him that it would throw him completely off his guard, and yet put him in such a position that he would find it almost impossible to resist the temptation, carefully arranged by us, to betray the country of his adoption.
It so happened that an important post had become vacant in a certain Government department dealing with a large number of confidential plans. I found out from Madame Gabrielle that, as a matter of fact, Easterbrook had for a long time been working strenuously to secure a Government appointment—honorary, of course, since money was no object to him, except as a means to an end. I have no doubt whatever that his motives were twofold. The first was, by securing official recognition, to remove any suspicion that might cling to him in consequence of his enemy origin; the second, I have just as little doubt, was to secure better opportunities of playing the spy. I made up my mind to oblige him in both particulars, but to arrange the dénouement myself.
I went to the Minister concerned, and revealed my plan. When I had fully explained to him what we knew and how much we suspected he realised the gravity of the situation, and, though my request was entirely irregular, he consented to what I asked.
A week later a paragraph in the London papers announced that Mr Essendine Easterbrook had been appointed a controller in a certain department of the Admiralty. There were a few cavillings in some quarters, on account of Easterbrook’s origin, but to the general public the position did not seem to be one of great importance, and little notice was taken of the appointment. As a matter of fact the position was a bogus one, created for the occasion, and everything connected with it had been arranged by the astute Special Branch with the sole design of entrapping Mr Essendine Easterbrook and the intermediary, whoever it might be, between the German agents in England and Jules Cauvin. For the wedding card had proved beyond doubt that Easterbrook and Cauvin were in close communication.
Chapter Nine.
The Secret of the Perfume.
Mr Easterbrook soon found himself comfortably ensconced in a large room, and surrounded by a staff, every single member of which, though he little suspected it, was in the direct employ of the Special Branch. Few suspects have ever been subjected to such microscopic scrutiny. He literally could not make a single movement unobserved. He was constantly shadowed in and out of his office by agents who were relieved every few hours; inside his house Madame Gabrielle was incessantly on the watch. And in the meantime we prepared for him the trap which proved his undoing.