out of this place
just after midnight, and I followed them. When they got to Button's
Hill, on that lonely stretch of road, I saw with my own eyes Freeman
suddenly attack him with a life-preserver, and having smashed his skull
before I could interfere, he stole the German's undertaking from his
pocket."

At this, the man accused, standing in the corner covered by several
revolvers, turned livid. He tried to protest, but his voice was only
faint and hollow before the living witness of his crime.

He had collapsed.

"My first impulse was to denounce the assassin, but what the dead man
had told me caused me to hesitate, and I resolved to first get at the
truth, which I have done with Mr. Raymond's aid," Richardson went on.
"The story of the schooner was true," he added, "except that it was a
steam schooner-rigged yacht which was about to land some stuff for
another depot at Burnham."

"What stuff?" I asked quickly.

"Ammunition ready for the German army when it lands upon this coast. It
was that fact which Pavely had discovered and told me. After agreeing to
keep the secret of the saccharine, it seems that he discovered that the
boxes really contained cartridges, a fact which he urged me to
communicate to the War Office after he had secured the German's bribe."

"Yes," declared Raymond, "the extensive cellaring under this place is
packed to the ceiling with ammunition ready for the Day of Invasion. See
this, which has just been brought!"

After prising open one of the boxes, many rounds of German
rifle-cartridges were revealed. "That man Freeman before you, though
brought up in England and passing as an Englishman, is, I have
discovered, a German agent, who, in the guise of estate-pupil, has been
busy composing a voluminous report upon supplies, accommodation, forage,
possible landing-places, and other information useful to the invader.
His district has been the important country between the Blackwater and
the Crouch, eastward of Maldon and Purleigh. Bramberger, who is also in
the German Secret Service, has been accumulating this store of
ammunition as well as forwarding his coadjutor's reports and plans to
Berlin, for, being German, it excited no suspicion that he posted many
bulky letters to Germany. He is often in direct communication with our
friend in Pont Street. My secret investigations revealed all this,
Jacox, hence I arranged this raid to-night."

"You'll never take me!" cried Freeman in defiance. But n