‘The signals?’

‘Same as I said in my cable. Every last one of them semaphore, lamp-code, Marconi—a copy, mind you, not the original. The sucker that sold it would have handed over the book itself. That was too dangerous. But it’s the real goods, and you can lay to that.’ He slapped the German upon the shoulder with a rough familiarity from which the other winced.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’m all alone in the house. I was only waiting for this. Of course, a copy is better than the original. If an original were missing they would change the whole thing. You think it’s all safe about this copy?’

The Irish-American had entered the study and stretched his long limbs from the arm-chair. He was a tall, gaunt man of sixty, with clear-cut features and a small goatee beard which gave him a general resemblance to the caricatures of Uncle Sam. A half-smoked sodden cigar hung from the corner of his mouth, and as he sat down he struck a match and relit it. ‘Makin’ ready for a move?’ he remarked, as he looked round him. ‘Say, mister,’ he added, as his eyes fell upon the safe from which the curtain was now removed, ‘you don’t tell me you keep your papers in that?’

‘Why not?’

‘Gosh, in a wide-open contraption like that! And they reckon you to be some spy. Why, a Yankee crook would be into that with a can-opener. If I’d known that any letter of mine was goin’ to lie loose in a thing like that I’d have been a mutt to write to you at all.’

‘It would puzzle any of your crooks to force that safe,’ Von Bork answered. ‘You won’t cut that metal with any tool.’

‘But the lock?’

‘No; it’s a double combination lock. You know what that is?’

‘Search me,’ said the American.

‘Well, you need a word as well as a set of figures before you can get the lock to work.’ He rose and showed a double radiating disc round the keyhole. ‘This outer one is for the letters, the inner one for the figures.’

‘Well, well, that’s fine.’

‘So it’s not quite as simple as you thought. It was four years ago that I had it made, and what do you think I chose for the word and figures?’

‘It’s beyond me.’

‘Well, I chose ‘August’ for the word, and ‘1914’ for the figures, and here we are.’

The American’s face showed his surprise and admiration.

‘My, but that was smart! You had it down to a fine thing.’

‘Yes; a few of us even then could have guessed the date. Here it is, and I’m shutting down to-morrow morning.’

‘Well, I guess you’ll have to fix me up too. I’m not stayin’ in this goldarned country all on my lonesome. In a week or less, from what I see, John Bull will be on his hind legs and fair rampin’. I’d rather watch him from over the water.’