Chapter Seventeen.
“The Plot Revealed.”
Within a week the man Tegelmund, accompanied by Engström, arrived in Paris and took up his abode in an obscure hotel near the Gare du Nord. But, though we kept a careful watch upon the pair, Engström, ever elusive and resourceful, suddenly disappeared! For six days he was absent. Then, as suddenly and mysteriously, he appeared again at the hotel.
Aubert, who had been detailed to watch Tegelmund, now reported that the latter had been across to the Orleans goods station, inquiring about some heavy cases of goods which had arrived from Lisbon.
“I have contrived to open one of the cases,” he said. “It contains some complicated and apparently delicate machinery, with a small dynamo. Apparently it is some sort of wireless plant, but, beyond that, I cannot make head or tail of it.”
At Aubert’s suggestion I went late one night to the Orleans goods yard. Aubert, by methods of persuasion not wholly original, had contrived to make friends with one of the officials, and we had no difficulty in securing access to the great goods shed, now silent and deserted, in which the mysterious cases lay. Prising open one end of the topmost case, I inspected the contents as closely as I could with the aid of my pocket flash-lamp. Within was what certainly appeared to be a wireless plant of some kind, but it was of a description entirely new to me, and I could not see enough of it to gain any idea of its purpose. Of course we dared not risk unpacking it. But we had made a great advance. The big cases could not be secretly moved, and our friend, the goods official, undertook to let us know promptly when he received orders to release them.
We waited in patience for a week, but still the cases remained untouched and uncalled for. Then came an incident which threw a flood of light on the proceedings of our enemies, though it told us nothing of their real motive; we were to learn that later.
One day I was strolling aimlessly along the Boulevard des Capucines, when I heard my name pronounced in accents of delighted surprise. Turning round, I instantly recognised an old friend in the person of Captain A—, who was one of the experts attached to the submarine branch of the British Admiralty.