hat's what took St. Alban across the Channel," he said. "The
English authorities wanted to be certain that there was no German
espionage. And there was no man in England able to be certain of that
except St. Alban. He went over to make sure. If the plans for the Somme
drive should get out of France, they should not get out through any
English avenue."

The Baronet paused.

"St. Alban went about the thing in his thorough, persistent manner. He
didn't trust to subordinates. He went himself. That's what took him out
on the English line. And that's how he came to be wounded in the elbow.

"It wasn't very much of a wound--a piece of shrapnel nearly spent when
it hit him. But the French hospital service was very much concerned. It
gave him every attention.

"The man came into Paris when he had finished. The French authorities
put him up at the Hotel Meurice. You know the Hotel Meurice. It's on
the Rue de la Rivoli. It looks out over the garden of the Tuileries. St.
Alban was satisfied with the condition of affairs in France, and he was
anxious to go back to London. Arrangements had been made for him to go
on the hospital transport.

"He was in his room at the Meurice waiting for the train to Calais. He
was, in fact, fatigued with the attention the French authorities had
given him. Everything that one could think of had been anticipated, he
said. He thought there could be nothing more. Then there was a timid
knock, and a nurse came in to say that she had been sent to see that the
dressing on his arm was all right. He said that he had found it easier
to submit to the French attentions than to undertake to explain that he
didn't need them.

"He was busy with some final orders, so he put out his arm and allowed
the nurse to take the pins out of the split sleeve and adjust the
dressing. She put on some bandages, made a little timid curtsey and went
out.

"St. Alban didn't think of it again until the German U-boat stopped the
transport the next morning in the Channel. He wasn't disturbed when the
submarine commander came into his cabin. He knew enough not to carry
any papers about with him. But Plutonburg didn't bother himself about
luggage. He'd had his signal from the factory chimney at Auteuil.
He stood there grinning in the cabin before St. Alban; that Satanic,
Chemosh grin that the artist got in the Munich picture.

"'I used to be something of a surgeon,' he said, 'Doctor Ulrich von
Plutonburg, if you will remember.