“Everything is quite satisfactory, my dear Gerald,” replied Hecq. “I will tell you all about it when you are stronger.”
But, weak though I was, I could not bear the suspense. “Tell me at once. Monsieur Hecq, I beg of you, or I shall never rest.” And Hecq, choosing the lesser of two evils, decided to unburden himself.
“Van Rosen and Easterbrook are both dead,” he said. “The bomb which rendered you unconscious struck Easterbrook’s house and killed them both. Mrs Easterbrook is terribly injured, but is alive, and will probably recover. Madame Gabrielle is quite safe, and Aubert, who was watching near you, was sheltered from the explosion by a projecting wall and was only badly shaken. He telephoned me at once, and I fortunately caught a train which was just leaving, and here I am. You have been unconscious for a day and a half.”
“What about the Dutch sailor?” I managed to gasp out in my astonishment.
“Oh,” replied Hecq, “we got him all right, with the plan in his possession. He has made a clean breast of everything. The plans were to have been photographed down to microscopic size and the films taken over to Cauvin sewn into his clothing. Two of my men are on their way to arrest Cauvin at once.”
But Cauvin proved too quick for us. As the agents of the Sûreté approached his house he must have recognised them and realised that the game was up. Directly they intimated to him that he was under arrest he snatched a revolver from his pocket and shot himself before their eyes. I have no doubt the result would have been the same if he had received the violet-scented card, which now, with the bogus invitation to the Easterbrook wedding, remains one of my cherished mementoes of one of the most fascinating of the many mysteries I have helped to unravel.
Thus by the hands of the Huns themselves the public were spared an astounding scandal, and the Allies were rid of three ingenious scoundrels engaged in a clever and insidious campaign. After Easterbrook’s death we were able to unravel the whole conspiracy. Easterbrook and van Rosen were two of the fingers of the Hidden Hand in England. They operated by means of banking accounts in various names, handling large sums placed freely at their disposal by other wealthy naturalised “Britons,” who proved in their own persons the truth of the adage coined in 1914 by a naturalised Hun—“Once a German, always a German.” Most of them were laid by the heels, and now, behind barricades of barbed wire in remote parts of the country, have leisure to repent the day when they matched their cunning against the skill of the International Secret Service Bureau of the Allies.