had even touched him--a horrible,
hideous red reptile, with squirming tentacles, a huge, glowing body, and
eyes like flame. It had crept upon him out of the darkness--he knew not
from where. It had seized him, resisted all his wild efforts to tear
loose from it, and when he finally sank, overcome and fainting, upon the
floor, his last conscious recollection was of the loathsome thing
settling down upon his breast and running its squirming 'feelers' up and
down his body."

"Of course! Of course! That was part of the game. It was after
something. Something of the utmost importance to German interests.
That's why the Chateau Larouge was refitted, why the Villa de Carjorac
was burnt down, and why this Monsieur Gaston Merode became engaged to
Mademoiselle Athalie."

"Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek? Nobody ever suspected. The
baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me,
to-day--and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the
appointment with you might be kept. How, then, could you guess?"

"By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they
do not make five. The inference is very clear: Baron de Carjorac is
President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its
public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are 'on the
inside' to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret
attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England. France is the key to the
situation. If, without the warning that must come through the delay of
picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the
German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain
immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours' time it can
be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a
sleeping people. To carry out this programme, the first step would, of
course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the
secret defences of France--the plans of fortification, the maps of the
'danger zone,' the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest
points--and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de
Carjorac? That is how I know that 'The Red Crawl' was after something of
vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne. That he got it, I know
from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of
peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and
ask the assis