“Well, Tack? So you are here with your report—eh?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” was his reply, as I seated myself on the edge of the bed, and he took a chair near the dressing-table and settled himself to talk.
Edward Tack was a man of many adventures. After a good many years at Scotland Yard, where he rose to be the chief of the Extradition Department on account of his knowledge of languages, he had been engaged by the Foreign Office as a member of our Secret Service abroad, mostly in Germany and Russia. During the past two years he had, as a blind to the police, carried on a small insurance agency business in Petersburg; but the information he gathered from time to time and sent to the Embassy was of the greatest assistance to us in our diplomatic dealings with Russia and the Powers.
He never came to the Embassy himself, nor did he ever hold any direct communication with any of the staff. He acted as our eyes and ears, exercising the utmost caution in transmitting to us the knowledge of men and matters which he so cleverly gained. He worked with the greatest secrecy, for though he had lived in Petersburg two whole years, he had never once been suspected by that unscrupulous spy-department controlled by General Markoff.
“I’ve been in Brighton several days,” my visitor said. “The hotel porter told me here that you were away, so I went to the ‘Old Ship!’ and waited for you.”
“Well—what have you discovered?” I inquired, handing him my cigarette-case. “Anything of interest?”
“Nothing very much, I regret to say,” was his reply. “I’ve worked for a whole month, often night and day, but Markoff’s men are wary—very wary birds, sir, as you know.”
“Have you discovered the real perpetrator of that bomb outrage?”
“I believe so. He escaped.”
“No doubt he did.”