es precisely what
Dawson chose to direct.

"Hagan is an American citizen," explained Dawson. "If he had been a
British subject I would have taken him at Euston--we have full
evidence of the burglary, and of the stolen papers in his suit-case.
But as he is a damned unbenevolent neutral we must prove his intention
to sell the papers to Germany. Then we can deal with him by secret
court-martial.[1] The journey to Holland will prove this intention.
Hagan has been most useful to us in Ireland, and now in the North of
England and in Scotland, but he is too enterprising and too daring to
be left any longer on the string. I will draw the ends together at the
Hook."

[Footnote 1: Author's Note: This conversation is dated May, 1916.]

"I did not want to go to Holland," said Cary to me, when telling his
story. "I was utterly sick and disgusted with the whole cold-blooded
game of cat and mouse, but the police needed my evidence about the
Notes and the burglary, and did not intend to let me slip out of their
clutches. Dawson was very civil and pleasant, but I was in fact as
tightly held upon his string as was the wretched Hagan. So I went on
to Holland with that quick-change artist, and watched him come on
board the steamer at Parkeston Quay, dressed as a rather
German-looking commercial traveller, eager for war commissions upon
smuggled goods. This sounds absurd, but his get-up seemed somehow to
suggest the idea. Then I went below. Dawson always kept away from me
whenever Hagan might have seen us together."

The passage across to Holland was free from incident; there was no
sign that we were at war, and Continental traffic was being carried
serenely on, within easy striking distance of the German submarine
base at Zeebrugge. The steamer had drawn in to the Hook beside the
train, and Hagan was approaching the gangway, suit-case in hand. The
man was on the edge of safety; once upon Dutch soil, Dawson could not
have laid hands upon him. He would have been a neutral citizen in a
neutral country, and no English warrant would run against him. But
between Hagan and the gangway suddenly interposed the tall form of the
ship's captain; instantly the man was ringed about by officers, and
before he could say a word or move a hand he was gripped hard and led
across the deck to the steamer's chart-house. Therein sat Dawson, the
real, undisguised Dawson, and beside him sat Richard Cary. Hagan's
face, which two minutes earlier had been glowin