s duly stopped. The
address he gave was that of a house situated on the outskirts of
Cleves.

"We had no idea what this letter was, but its apparent value in the eyes
of the shrewd Mr. Schulte made it highly desirable that we should obtain
possession of it without delay. Four of us were selected for this
dangerous mission of getting into Germany and fetching it, by hook or by
crook, from the house at Cleves where it was deposited. We four were to
enter Germany by different routes and different means and to converge on
Cleves (which is quite close to the Dutch frontier).

"It would take too long to tell you of the very exact organization which
we worked out to exclude all risk of failure and the various schemes we
evolved for keeping in touch with one another though working separately
and in rotation. Nor does it matter very much how I got into Germany.
The fact is that, at my very first attempt to get across the frontier, I
realized that some immensely powerful force was working against me.

"I managed it, with half a dozen hairbreadth escapes, and I set down my
success solely to my knowledge of German and to that old trick of mine
of German imitations. But I felt everywhere the influence of this unseen
hand, enforcing a meticulous vigilance which it was almost impossible to
escape. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn that two of my
companions came to grief at the very outset."

My brother lowered his voice and looked about him.

"Do you know what happened to those two gallant fellows?" he said. "Jack
Tracy was found dead on the railway: Herbert Arbuthnot was discovered
hanging in a wood. 'Suicide of an Unknown Individual' was what the
German papers called it in each case. But I heard the truth ... never
mind how. They were ambushed and slaughtered in cold blood."

"And the third man you spoke of?" I asked.

"Philip Brewster? Vanished, Des ... vanished utterly. I fear he, too,
has gone west, poor chap!

"Of the whole four of us I was the only one to reach our objective.
There I drew blank. The letter was not in the hiding-place indicated.
I think it never had been or the Huns would have got it. I felt all the
time that they didn't know exactly where the letter was but that
they anticipated our attempt to get it, hence the unceasing vigilance all
along the frontier and inside it, too.

"They damned nearly got me at Cleves: I escaped as by a miracle, and the
providential thing for me was that I had never po