"Well?" asked Vera, looking up at her lover.
"The stout German's description tallies exactly with that of Hermann Hartmann."
"Ah! I see," I remarked. "You've certainly not been idle, Ray." And with my eyes fixed upon that puzzling array of figures and words, I added, "If we could only decipher the whole of these we might elucidate the truth."
"The injured man's knowledge of Hartmann, the crafty chief of the German Secret Service in London, is certainly suspicious," Vera remarked. "But cannot some information be gathered from the landlady at Hargwynne Street? He may have had visitors there."
"And if he did, they would speak in German, which the good lady could not understand," her lover replied thoughtfully, contemplating the end of his cigarette.
"There could be no harm in seeing the good lady," the girl remarked. "I'll go over to-morrow and have a chat with her."
"And in the meantime Jack and I will pursue another line of inquiry," remarked my friend.
Vera rose, a tall, fair-haired, and sweet-faced figure in black, and seating herself at the table, served us our tea. She was no stranger at our chambers, and as an Admiral's daughter, the question of German spies in England, which her lover had taken up so strongly, interested her most keenly. The Forth Bridge peril had already impressed a great and serious truth upon the Government, but Ray Raymond's success had only whetted his appetite for further exploration and discovery.
Therefore on the following morning I called at his chambers in Bruton Street—a tastefully furnished bachelor suite, the art green and blues of which were scarcely in keeping with his serious, earnest character—and together we drove in a taxi-cab to St. Thomas's Hospital, where, in the accident ward, we stood at the bedside of the mysterious Steinheim. His head was enveloped in surgical bandages, but during the night he had regained consciousness. To the questions we put to him, however, we obtained no satisfactory replies. His mind seemed to be a perfect blank as to what had occurred.
Ray read the copy of those cryptic figures upon the scrap of paper found in the railway carriage. When my friend pronounced the name of the station "Weldon and Corby," the invalid's big grey eyes started from his head as he exclaimed in German: