"Tell me the facts regarding the stolen plan as far as is known," I
said, leaning on the gate also and gazing away across the wide stretch
of moonlit waters.

"The facts are curious," replied my friend. "As you know, I've been away
from London a fortnight, and in those fourteen days I've not been idle.
It seems that when the first plan leaked out and was published abroad,
the Admiralty had two others prepared, and into both these a commission
which came down here has, for several months, been busily at work
investigating their feasibility. At last one of the schemes has been
adopted. Tracings of it are kept in strictest secrecy in a safe in the
offices down yonder, together with larger-scale tracings of the various
docks, the submarine station, repairing docks, patent slips, and
defensive forts--some twenty-two documents in all. The details of the
defensive forts are, of course, kept a profound secret. The safe has two
keys, one kept by the superintendent of the works, Mr. Wilkinson, who
lives over at Dunfermline, and the other by the first officer, Mr.
Farrar, who resides in a house half a mile from the offices. The safe
cannot be opened except by the two gentlemen being present together. The
leakage could not come from within. None of the plans have ever been
found to be missing and no suspicion attaches to anybody, yet there are
two most curious facts. The first is that in July last a young clerk
named Edwin Jephson, living with his mother in Netley Road, Shepherd's
Bush, and employed by a firm of auctioneers in the City, was picked up
in the Thames off Thorneycroft's at Chiswick. At the inquest, the girl
to whom the young man was engaged testified to his strangeness of manner
a few days previously; while his mother stated how, prior to his
disappearance, he had been absent from home for four days, and on his
return had seemed greatly perturbed, and had remarked: 'There'll be
something in the papers about me before long.' On the body were found
fourteen shillings in silver, some coppers, a few letters, and a folio
of blue foolscap containing some writing in German which, on
translation, proved to be certain details regarding a fortress. A
verdict of suicide was returned; but the statement in German, placed by
the police before the Admiralty, proved to be an exact copy of one of
the documents preserved in the safe here, at Rosyth."

"Then the Admiralty cannot deny the leakage of the secret?" I remarked.

"No; bu