way out.

That night I called on Ray at Bruton Street, but he was out at the
theatre with Vera. At half-past eleven they called as they went back to
the girl's aunt's, and as they sat before the fire, Vera with her
opera-cloak thrown back revealing a pretty pale blue corsage a trifle
_decollete_, I reported the non-success of my mission.

"He's a pig-headed old ass!" I declared. "One of millions of others in
England. They close their eyes to the dangers of this horde of spies
among us, and will only open them when the Germans come marching up the
street and billet themselves in their houses. But he's a strange man,
Ray, a very strange man," I added.

"You're right, Mr. Jacox," the girl declared. "Instead of teaching boys
how to scout and instructing young men in the use of popguns, we should
strike first at the root of all things. Cut off the source of this
secret information which daily goes across the North Sea. Such hidebound
patriots as the Professor are a peril to the nation!"

"If he refuses to help himself, Jacox, we must protect him ourselves,"
Ray declared. "I leave it to you and Vera to keep an open eye until I
return from Selkirk next Monday. I'm bound to go down and see my sister.
She seems very ill indeed."

And so a very important and delicate affair was thus placed in my hands.

Vera Vallance announced herself ready and eager to assist me, and that
night I walked back to Bloomsbury much puzzled how next to act.

That the Germans would attempt to secure the secret of the new steel was
absolutely certain. But to us, success meant the keeping of it to
Britain, and the armouring of our new _Dreadnoughts_ with a resisting
power eight times that of our enemies.

Next day I journeyed down to Sheffield and called upon the manager of
Messrs. Joynson and Mackinder, the great steel-makers, who, as you know,
hold the contracts for making the armour-plates of our improved
_Dreadnoughts_. He told me how the firm had just constructed six of the
new Emden electrical furnaces, and had also taken over the wonderful new
process which the Professor had invented.

He then courteously took me across to that portion of the great grimy
works, with its wonderful steel melting and refining furnaces, to where
the Emden process was about to be carried out.

"I suppose you have no fear of the new method being learnt by any of
your rivals--by any German firm, for instance?" I asked.

"Not in the least," laughed the manager