electric bell at the front door had buzzed, and
Cary, slipping from the room, presently returned with a man who to me,
at the first glance, was a complete stranger. I sprang up, moved round
to a position whence I could see clearly the visitor's ears, and
gasped. It was Dawson beyond a doubt, but it was not the Dawson whom I
had known in the north. So what I had vaguely surmised was
true--Cary's Dawson and Copplestone's Dawson were utterly unlike.
Dawson winked at me, glanced towards Cary, and shook his head; from
which I gathered that he did not desire his appearance to be the
subject of comment. I therefore greeted him without remark, and, as he
sat down under the electric lights, examined him in detail. This
Dawson was ten years older than the man whom I had known and fenced
with. The hair of this one was lank and grey, while that of mine was
brown and curly; the face of this one was white and thin, while the
face of mine was rather full and ruddy. The teeth were different--I
found out afterwards that Dawson, who had few teeth of his own,
possessed several artificial sets of varied patterns--the shape of the
mouth was different, the nose was different. I could never have
recognised the man before me had I not possessed that clue to identity
furnished by his unchanging ears.

"So, Dawson," said I slowly, "we meet again. Permit me to say that I
congratulate you. It is very well done."

He grinned and glanced at the unconscious Cary. "You are learning.
Bill Dawson takes a bit of knowing."

"Have you any news, Mr. Dawson?" asked Cary eagerly.

"Not much. The wires of the _Antinous_ have all been renewed--the
Admiralty won't allow cables to be patched except at sea--but I
haven't found out who played hanky-panky with them. It could not have
been any one in the engine-room party, as none of them went near the
place where the wires were cut. Besides, they were engineers, not
electricians, and could have known nothing of the arrangements and
disposition of the ship's wires. My man who worked with them is
positive that they are a sound, good lot without a sea-lawyer or a
pacifist among them; a gang of plain, honest tykes. So we are thrown
back on the maintenance party, included in which were all sorts of
ratings. Some of them are skilled in the electrical fittings--my own
man with them is, for one--but we get the best accounts of all of
them. They are long service men, cast for sea owing to various medical
reasons, but p