ch information to our Embassy in London--it was what
he was employed to do--but I am sure that he did not basely betray the
wonderful confidence of his hosts. Our countries were at peace. My
father is no Prussian; he is a chivalrous gentleman. I am sure that he
did not send more than his English naval friends were content at the
time that he should send. For in those years your newspapers and your
books upon the Royal Navy of England concealed little from the world.
I have visited Dartmouth; I have dined in the Naval College there with
bright sailor boys of my own age. It was then my one dream, had I
remained in England, to have become an Englishman, and to have myself
served in your Navy. It was a vain dream, but I knew no better. Fate
and my birth made me afterwards your enemy. I would have fought you
gladly face to face on land or sea, but never, never, would I have
stabbed the meanest of Englishmen in the back.

When I was sixteen years old I left England with my parents and
returned to Triest. I was a good mathematician with a keen taste for
mechanics. I spent two years in the naval engineering shops at Pola,
and I was gazetted as a sub-lieutenant in the engineering branch of
the Austrian Navy. My next two years were spent afloat. Although I did
not know it, I had already been marked out by my superiors for the
Secret Service. My perfect acquaintance with English, my education at
Blundell's, my knowledge of your thoughts and your queer ways, and
twists of mind, had equipped me conspicuously for Secret Service work
in your midst.

As a youth of twenty, in the first flush of manhood, I was seconded
for service here, and I returned to England. That was five years ago.

* * * * *

[I paused, for my throat was dry, and looked up. Cary was leaning
forward intent upon every word. Dawson's face was still turned away;
he had not moved. It seemed to me that to our party of three had been
added a fourth, the spirit of Trehayne, and that he anxiously waited
there yonder in the shadows for the deliverance of our judgment. Had
he, an English public school boy, played the game according to the
immemorial English rules? I went on.]

* * * * *

It was extraordinarily easy for me to obtain employment in the heart
of your naval mysteries. Few questions were asked; you admitted me as
one of yourselves. I took the broad open path of full acceptance of
your conditions.