And so for many days and many weeks the remembrance of that sweet and dainty figure ever haunted me. I took a holiday, spending greater part of the time on a friend's yacht in the Norwegian fjords. Yet I could not get away from that face and the curious mystery attaching to it.
On my return home, I was next day rung up on the telephone by my friend Major Carmichael, of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, who had been one of my assistants in preparing the forthcoming book. At his urgent request I went round to see him in Whitehall, and on being ushered into his office, I was introduced to a tall, dark-bearded man, whose name I understood to be Shayler.
"My dear Jacox," exclaimed the Major, "forgive me for getting you here in order to cross-examine you, but both Shayler and myself are eagerly in search of some information. You recollect those maps of yours, marked with all sorts of confidential memoranda relating to the East Coast—facts that would be of the utmost value to the German War Office—what did you do with them?"
"I deposited them here. I suppose they're still here," was my reply.
"Yes. But you'll recollect my warning long ago, when you were reconnoitring. Did you ever allow them to pass out of your hands?"
"Never. I carried them in my portfolio, the key of which was always on my chain."
"Then what do you think of these?" he asked, walking to a side table where lay a pile of twenty or thirty glass photographic negatives. And taking up one of them, he handed it to me.
It was a photograph of one of my own maps! The plan was the section of country in the vicinity of Glasgow. Upon it I saw notes in my own handwriting, the tracing of the telegraph wires with the communications of each wire, and dozens of other facts of supreme importance to the invader.
"Great heavens!" I gasped. "Where did you get that?"
"Shayler will tell you, my dear fellow!" answered the Major. "It seems that you've been guilty of some sad indiscretion."