“None whatever,” replied Mr Engström. “Moreover, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. One of the appliances with which we are concerned is of such importance that, while we make the greater part of it, a vital portion is manufactured in England, and the apparatus is not put together until the whole is actually on the submarine for which it is intended. Consequently, unless a thief or spy secured copies of the plans both here and in England he would be powerless to profit by either. I may mention that this arrangement was arrived at with the British Admiralty at our express wish and suggestion. I am quite frank with you, Mr Sant.”
“One more question, Mr Engström,” I added. “You are in a position to know of any important inventions in connection with submarine work. Have you heard of any recent invention which would bring it within the bounds of possibility that your double is acting honestly and has really something to sell?”
“That is out of the question,” returned the engineer decidedly. “Unless the invention were German, in which case it would not come out of that country, I think I should certainly have heard something of it. Of course, we have rivals in our business, but there is a certain amount of freemasonry even among business rivals. I know all the people who are making submarine parts—there are very few who could or would tackle a big invention. Besides, if the man has an honest bargain to drive, why should he assume my name?”
This argument was unanswerable. But I confess I was still a long way from guessing just what the bogus Engström and his friends were plotting.
My next visit was to the Swedish police in search of information about Madame Bohman. Here, however, I was quite at fault. It was evident she was passing under an assumed name, and I could not succeed in identifying her among the long array of photographs of known German agents laid before me by the chief of the Swedish Secret Police.
Arriving at Bergen, I received, before I sailed for England, a long telegram from Madame Gabrielle, telling me that Engström, Madame Bohman, and Thornton had left for Paris. Fearing that they would immediately recognise her if she followed them, she had telephoned the news to Hecq, and that astute official had promised to take the suspects under his own wing for the immediate future, pending my arrival.
I proceeded to London, where, to my dismay, I learned that, although Madame Bohman had arrived in Paris with Thornton, Engström was missing.
Twenty minutes later I was speaking with Hecq at St. Germain over the official telephone. Three days later I heard that Hecq’s men had succeeded in running the elusive Engström to earth at Marseilles, where he was staying at the Hôtel Louvre et Paix under the name of Jansen, and was constantly meeting a compatriot named Tegelmund.
The situation at this moment remained a complete puzzle so far as the real objective of the gang was concerned. On the one hand, we had at Marseilles the mysterious individual who posed as the Swedish engineer, Engström. On the other, we had his known associates, Thornton and Madame Bohman, in Paris. Engström was living quite openly, with no appearance of concealment, at a good hotel, but he was quite obviously doing nothing and meeting nobody. The other two, however, were just as obviously lying low. They had taken apartments at a very small and not very reputable hotel in the Rue Royale, and both had changed their names, entering France with new and apparently perfectly genuine Swedish passports, issued only a few weeks previously.
Our next discovery was a staggering surprise. One of our agents, who had been watching Madame Bohman, came in and reported that, late the previous night, she had left her hotel and walked swiftly to an obscure café in the Quartier Latin. She had entered the place, taken a seat at a table by herself, and called for a glass of wine. While she was drinking it, a man, very untidy and apparently half intoxicated, lurched up to the table and sat down facing her. She took no notice of him whatever, or he of her. Calling a waiter, the man ordered a double glass of Chianti. Our agent, seated at an adjoining table, saw her then glance quickly at the stranger, and a moment later she ordered an absinthe.