uff here. The
enemy wants it, wants it badly; that is good enough for me."

"But," remonstrated Cary, "no one knows of these papers, or of the use
to which I am putting them, except my son in the Navy, my wife (who
has not read a line of them), and my publisher in London."

"Hum!" commented Dawson. "Then how do you account for this?"

He opened his leather despatch-case and drew forth a parcel carefully
wrapped up in brown paper. Within the wrapping was a large white
envelope of the linen woven paper used for registered letters, and
generously sealed. To Cary's surprise, for the envelope appeared to be
secure, Dawson cautiously opened it so as not to break the seal which
was adhering to the flap and drew out a second smaller envelope, also
sealed. This he opened in the same delicate way and took out a third;
from the third he drew a fourth, and so on until eleven empty
envelopes had been added to the litter piled upon Cary's table, and
the twelfth, a small one, remained in Dawson's hands.

"Did you ever see anything so childish?" observed he, indicating the
envelopes. "A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just
crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one
even if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to--well,
someone in whom we are deeply interested, though he does not know it."

Cary, who had been fascinated by the succession of sealed envelopes,
stretched out his hand towards one of them. "Don't touch," snapped out
Dawson. "Your clumsy hands would break the seals, and then there would
be the devil to pay. Of course all these envelopes were first opened
in my office. It takes a dozen years to train men to open sealed
envelopes so that neither flap nor seal is broken, and both can be
again secured without showing a sign of disturbance. It is a trade
secret."

Dawson's expert fingers then opened the twelfth envelope, and he
produced a letter. "Now, Mr. Cary, if we had not known you and also
known that you were absolutely honest and loyal--though dangerously
simple-minded and careless in the matter of windows--this letter would
have been very awkward indeed for you. It runs: 'Hagan arrives 10.30
p.m. Wednesday to get Cary's Naval Notes. Meet him. Urgent.' Had we
not known you, Mr. Richard Cary might have been asked to explain how
Hagan knew all about his Naval Notes and was so very confident of
being able to get them."

Cary smiled. "I have often felt," said he, "e