e is a strange goddess, Des," he said, his weary eyes roving out
over the turgid, yellow stream, "and she has been kind to you, though,
God knows, you have played a man's part in all this. She has placed in
your possession something for which at least five men have died in vain,
something that has filled my thoughts, sleeping and waking, for more
than half a year. What you have told me throws a good deal of light upon
the mystery which I came to this cursed country to elucidate, but it
also deepens the darkness which still envelops many points in the
affair.

"You know there are issues in this game of ours, old man, that stand
even higher than the confidence that there has always been between us
two. That is why I wrote to you so seldom out in France--I could tell
you nothing about my work: that is one of the rules of our game. But now
you have broken into the scramble yourself, I feel that we are partners,
so I will tell you all I know.

"Listen, then. Some time about the beginning of the year a letter
written by a German interned at one of the camps in England was stopped
by the Camp Censor. This German went by the name of Schulte: he was
arrested at a house in Dalston the day after we declared war on
Germany. There was a good reason for this, for our friend Schulte--we
don't know his real name--was known to my Chief as one of the most
daring and successful spies that ever operated in the British Isles.

"Therefore, a sharp eye was kept on his correspondence, and one day this
letter was seized. It was, I believe, perfectly harmless to the eye, but
the expert to whom it was eventually submitted soon detected a
conventional code in the chatty phrases about the daily life of the
camp. It proved to be a communication from Schulte to a third party
relating to a certain letter which, apparently, the writer imagined the
third party had a considerable interest in acquiring. For he offered to
sell this letter to the third party, mentioning a sum so preposterously
high that it attracted the earnest attention of our Intelligence people.
On half the sum mentioned being paid into the writer's account at a
certain bank in London, the letter went on to say, the writer would
forward the address at which the object in question would be found."

"It was a simple matter to send Schulte a letter in return, agreeing to
his terms, and to have the payment made, as desired, into the bank he
mentioned. His communication in reply to this wa