“I have kept constant observation upon the individual, Mr Thornton, but, with the exception of the fact that he is acquainted with Halbmayr, of the Königgrätzer-strasse—which, after all, may be quite innocent—I see no reason to suspect him of hostile intent. He has telegraphed several times to Lucerne, addressing his messages to the name of Syberg at the poste restante. You could probably secure sight of one of these; I cannot at this end. He was visited a fortnight ago by a Swedish lady named Bohman. The latter may be a travelling agent of the enemy, but somehow, after a close vigilance, I feel doubtful. When Thornton leaves I shall advise you. It will be best for Garcia to follow, as they have not met, and he is here for that purpose.”
The third report was from a certain very alert English business man named Charles Johnson-Meads, who had offices in Fenchurch Street, London. It was Johnson-Meads who, by a curious statement he made to me one evening, in my rooms in Curzon Street, London, had first aroused my suspicions that a deep plot, in which Engström and Thornton were somehow implicated, was on foot.
Johnson-Meads’ report read:
“I have strained every effort to learn more of these people and their mysterious movements in London. Contrary to my belief, I have now established the fact that Engström is, after all, the well-known Swedish engineer, and not the fraud I believed him to be.”
This, of course, appeared to be tolerably conclusive, and I was inclined to throw up the whole business at once and return to Paris, where other work urgently awaited my attention. It was clear enough from the report of the French Consul-General at Stockholm that Engström and Linner would not lend their name to any shady proceedings, while Johnson-Meads’ apparent certainty that Engström was really what he professed to be seemed to cut away the principal basis of suspicion.
Half an hour later I met Madame Gabrielle and Luigi in the same private room and showed them the three reports, which were as disappointing to them as they were to me. Of Madame Bohman, Gabrielle had failed to discover anything which could give reasonable grounds for suspicion. According to her own statement—for the resourceful Madame Gabrielle had speedily scraped up an hotel acquaintance with her—Madame Bohman and Engström were old friends, having known each other for years in Stockholm. Moreover, it was evident that Madame Bohman at least knew Stockholm well, for Madame Gabrielle was intimately acquainted with that city, and had no difficulty, by means of apparently artless conversation, in testing the accuracy of Madame Bohman’s knowledge. To all intents and purposes we seemed to be on a wild-goose chase, and I expressed this view.
“There is nothing in it,” was my verdict. “I think the best thing we can do is to give up wasting our time and get back to Paris at once. You know there is the Morny affair waiting for me, and Hecq is anxious I should take it in hand without delay.”
“The Morny affair” was one of those queer financial scandals which have been so rife in Paris during the war. A Frenchman, hitherto of unblemished reputation as a patriot, had suddenly come under suspicion of trafficking with the enemy. Questions and rumours had been flying thickly in the Paris Press, as well as in the Chamber, and it was urgently important that the unfortunate Mr Morny—for I, at least, believed he was being slandered by a group of business rivals and political enemies—should be cleared once and for all of suspicions which were rapidly reducing him to a state of complete prostration. How, later, I succeeded in completely vindicating his character, I hope to tell at some future time—at present a full disclosure of the facts might do untold harm.
But Madame Gabrielle, her feminine intuition busily at work, was not to be easily put off. She strongly dissented from my view.
“Yesterday,” she said, “during Madame Bohman’s absence with Engström at Brunner, I took Luigi’s master-key, and, entering her room, opened her dressing-case and thoroughly searched her papers. It is true I found nothing of interest, save that there were letters from certain friends in London, the addresses of which I have copied. And I found this!”