CHAPTER XIII
OUR relief upon discovering that Klein was the thief who had made away with Martin's plans was very great; for there is scarcely a greater tragedy of the mind than mistrust of one's fellows, and I doubt if either Jimmy or I could have been entirely frank and free with our men had not proof of their innocence been so unexpectedly given us. Retribution in Klein's case had come swiftly, and in a most unexpected manner. The cause of his death was very apparent, for the whole back of his head was crushed in as if by some flying fragment of metal hurled by the explosion of the torpedo that had sent the Esperanza so swiftly to the bottom. It was, of course, impossible to conjecture in what portion of the ship he had been at the time of the explosion; but it was quite certain that he had not been seen in the engine-room. He was the only man who had gone to his death. It was necessary for us to perform the rather gruesome task of searching his body for other evidences, which we did thoroughly, one of us in the meantime keeping watch lest some intruder discover us and put us in awkward situation with the authorities, who must be notified with due regard to coroner's investigations. We found nothing whatever of an incriminating nature and were placing the sodden letters and personal belongings back in his pocket when Jimmy called attention to what was apparently a Roman Catholic scapular suspended in the customary manner around the dead man's neck by a black tape. Honoring the reverence due to the dead man's religion, I was in the act of tucking the scapular into position when Jimmy, with what I thought a most callous disregard for the proprieties, stooped forward, caught the braid in his hand, and with a wrench broke it away from the dead man's neck.
"Don't do that, Jimmy," I expostualted. "He had at least a right to his religion."
"Religion nothing," Jimmy snorted contemptuously. "He was no Catholic, I know, because I am one myself, and had to shut him up one day for his blasphemy against my religion. This looks like a scapular all right, but it isn't; or if so he had no business wearing it. If I am making a mistake, may the Holy Saints forgive me!"
He crossed himself, then took his clasp-knife from his pocket, and ripped the edges of the tiny black case and withdrew therefrom a curious little square of silk embroidered with a yellow cipher. He stood with it in his hand, nonplussed; but I took it from him, striving vainly to remember where I had seen identically such a square once before. Of a sudden my memory responded.
"That," I said to Jimmy, "is the final proof! And the odd part of it is that Klein was no ordinary, casual spy; but actually a permanent secret service agent on the Prussian staff. I saw one of these once before, in Plymouth, since the war broke out. It was shown me as a curiosity by a friend of mine who is a high officer in the British Navy. With that little square of silk Klein could have gone aboard any German ship and made demands instead of requests. He could have gone anywhere in Germany with that as his sole passport."
"It proves another thing, too," said Jimmy. "That the people who employed this man were not only pretty high up, but knew a whole lot more of what I was trying to do than I had any idea anybody on earth could have guessed."
"They certainly took no chances," I added, "because the fact that they selected a man of such importance for the job shows that they were not gunning for an elephant with a mosquito gun. All the other chaps were probably mere subsidiaries; but in any event they were determined to watch you to the last minute, and catch you at the moment when your invention was perfected."
"But if that is so," declared Jimmy, "they must have been mighty badly misinformed, or else somebody bungled! Otherwise they would not have made an attempt in New York Harbor, which thereby put us on guard, and again, they would not have employed Cochrane to try to nip the incomplete plans before we reached Maracaibo. You see they really were not completed until three or four nights ago."
"It seems to me that Klein must have been playing a lone hand and unaware of the possible interference of other men," I reasoned; "for his method would have been to allay all suspicion and to keep actual tab on your work until he was fairly sure you were at the goal, when he trusted to opportunity to enable him to clean the whole thing up in one reckless dash. It is probable that he was immensely annoyed by the efforts made in New York Harbor, and again by Cochrane, both of which seriously upset his own plans of campaign."
"Perhaps that's true," he agreed, and proceeded to cut open the other little square of black. Inside it was some thin paper, too wet to be extracted without its destruction, so Jimmy forbore, thrust it into his pocket and said, "We'd best go now and notify the authorities that there is a dead man on the beach."
Without much difficulty we found a man to whom we made our report and gave our names and addresses, knowing that we should be called upon as witnesses at the inquest, and then headed straight for Jimmy's rooms at the hotel, where, with the utmost pains, we extracted the piece of paper that had baffled us on the beach. We cut it carefully away, immersed it in a wash-basin of clean water, and by exercising infinite care got it straightened out almost intact. There were evidences of writing on it in lead pencil, but with the paper wet through these marks were totally indeciperable and meaningless; so we were again compelled to have patience, and solved this problem by going out and buying a pane of glass, spreading the wet sheet of paper on it and drying it in the sun. We were interrupted in our detective work by a call from an island official and had to attend the inquest. It was rather long, official, and tedious, and it was late in the afternoon when we returned to Jimmy's room. The paper was now thoroughly dry, but to our annoyance was still illegible. We put it away in a safe place and began a search through the shops of the town to purchase either a powerful reading-glass or a microscope. We succeeded in finding, at length, a fair magnifying-glass and hurriedly returned to the hotel. We lost no time in applying it to that troublesome piece of paper, and almost instantly the words, broken, faint, and illegible, came to view. They were:
"The—was made by—and recep—left front leg—press knot—right cor—top—than—opens with spring."
It was plainly the instructions how to open the secret receptacle in Jimmy's laboratory, and was, therefore, proof that no precautions had been overlooked by the secret agent and his subordinates. It made it definitely certain, also, that he had been assisted in New York by some one who had found it necessary to convey the news to him in writing, because had he himself made a memorandum there would have been no need for him to have filled in the name of the maker. Thus another point which had been obscure was cleared up; for now we knew that Klein had been in possession of Jimmy's secret previous to the time he had signed on as engineer aboard the Esperanza.
Together we reasoned it out that Klein and his assistants had kept Jimmy under constant espionage for a long time, and it was not unlikely that even our conversation in the restaurant on that night when Jimmy had first given me his confidence had been overheard and reported. Probably from that hour onward there was never a moment ashore, be he awake or asleep, when Jimmy's every movement was not noted. Then Klein had decided to take no risk whatever of Jimmy's escaping him, and so, having at some period of his life been a very competent marine engineer, had forged his papers, giving himself a clean record of constant employment, and thus made his way into the engine-room staff of the Esperanza.
In the long, idle days that followed, when we were as helpless as any men very well could be, Jimmy's spirits seemed to revive to their accustomed pitch. The certainty that his secret had not been stolen from him, and that all plans and memoranda were in his possession, which would enable him to resume work as soon as we could get away from the island, were sufficient in themselves to render him cheerful, although vastly impatient.
It seemed to me that I had come to know every inhabitant of that island, had exhausted every place of interest and grown tired of hoping, in the twenty-two days which we actually endured before anything bearing either sail or smoke came in; and then, very early one morning, Jimmy came jubilantly thumping on my door and shouted: "A ship! There's a ship blew into harbor last night. Hurry up, show a leg."
He had no need to arouse me with that old-time phrase of the sea, because my feet had struck the floor, and I was leaping into my clothes before he had halfway finished his sentence. I was at that stage of desperation where I would willingly have embarked upon anything that could carry me away from that island. We hastened down to the beach to find out who she was, and learned that she was a little tramp schooner with an auxiliary engine which plied independently up and down the Windward, Leeward, and Lesser Antilles; also that she would probably be in port at least two days, which seemed a very long time to men who were so eager to get away. She was bound for Barbados, that, while not altogether in the direction we should have chosen, would, at least, insure our finding a passage more speedily on some commodious packet bound either northward or southward. We returned to the hotel and had breakfast, after which we sent out a runner and had all members of the old Esperanza's crew assembled where we lodged and asked the men their individual wishes, and before noon that day knew that all, without exception, were as well "fed-up" with the islands as we were and would gladly avail themselves of the chance to get away from it. I therefore sought the skipper of the Reina del Mar—for under this pretentious name that dingy little wind-jammer sailed—and surprised him by offering him such a passenger list. He threw up his hands in a Spanish gesture and said that while I honored him with my patronage he thought it would be almost impossible to entertain twenty-four men aboard a schooner whose own crew consisted of but eight men, and it took a vast amount of persuasion to get him to undertake the task. We solved it by agreeing to stop on deck in watches and take our own chances of a drenching; for we were resolved not to pass further time on the island if it could be avoided.
Looking back over the difficulties and trials that we endured about that time, I recall with a smile how fortunate it was, after all, that what seemed to me the hardship of having to wait two days to go aboard the Queen of the Sea, turned out as it did; for on the very morning of the day we were due to sail a messenger came hurrying from the cable office requesting my presence immediately. Wondering what new obstacle could have been put in my way, and somewhat "grumpy," I responded. The gray-haired reserve officer in charge of the cable office, with whom I had become somewhat friendly, took me for the second time into his little private apartment, and I noted that his air was one of great exultation.
Captain Hale," he said, eager to impart his news, I have something which I am certain will give you as much delight as it does me; for you have been the active agent in securing justice for a much-misunderstood countryman of mine. I have the extreme satisfaction to tell you that the unfortunate and so-long-misguided man, Monsieur Hector de la Périgord,has been granted amnesty. In recompense for the splendid and munificent attempt he made to be of service to France, the French Government has not only given him an unqualified pardon, but the President himself has further honored him by a message of thanks."
He stood beaming at me as if overjoyed by the success of his efforts; but said nothing whatever of the part he had played in the entire affair. To me there could come no more gratifying news, for that I had so disastrously failed in delivering Monsieur Périgord's gold was now offset by the certain knowledge that I had rendered him a service of value. I had thought and brooded over it so much that I was actually as happy as if the pardon had been for myself. We stood smiling like a pair of successful conspirators.
"But, monsieur," I said, "it is to you that the credit is due; for alone I could have done nothing. I did no more than tell you the truth concerning one who is old and sorely distressed, whereas you risked your official position to send his appeal across the wires."
He shrugged his shoulders, but, still smiling happily, turned to his desk and took up some papers, which he held in his hands as he replied. "What I did," he said, "is merely what one Frenchman would do for another. I tried to be, as you said that day when you told me the truth of this affair, not only a Frenchman, but one who had an opportunity to perform a kindly act. I did not tell you at the time that it was to my own brother I should appeal, and that he is a man of a most prominent position in France. I do not know what difficulties he has had to overcome, or what efforts he has been compelled to make; but, Monsieur Hale, all that doesn't matter. It is results that count. We have them here."
He tapped the papers suggestively and then, as if amused and yet not unashamed, exclaimed: "After all, what a lot of children we Frenchmen are! Sentiment! Always sentiment. There are tears in the eyes of our poilus sometimes when they fight. We go into ecstatic extravagances over trivial things, although we have, thank God, the ability to shut our teeth quite grimly and die when graver exigencies arise. No man of France ever forgives halfway. No man of France is ever enlisted in any enterprise in which he does not plunge as unreservedly as it is possible for any human being to plunge. And, monsieur, I have here before me an unusual proof of how far the France of a Frenchman can go when once sentiment is involved. Something I said in my numerous messages may possibly have had influence, but here it is."
Again he turned to the papers which he had bound together with a clip, and said: "If you wish, it is to you that the privilege is given of conveying the news to Monsieur Périgord that all his citizenship and all his honor have been restored, and that a welcome worthy of such a man awaits him in France. Already he has been notified of the loss of his gold through the sinking of your ship, but news of his pardon has been withheld, both courtesy and kindliness deeming it best that the conveyance of his pardon be through you. This, I am told, is to be your reward. For, being an American, those who knew of the part you have played believed that you would not care for the baubles of decoration so much as you would for the opportunity of telling Monsieur Périgord personally that your mission was not a failure. It is all very unofficial as far as documents go, because we are unfortunately, at the present time, without that easy communication by mail which prevails in time of peace; but I am privately informed that the first mail which reaches Maracaibo will include an official letter to Monsieur Périgord that will end his exile, as well as bestow upon him the grateful thanks of the French Government for what he attempted to do."
He folded the papers, and placed them in an official envelope.
"Do you care to undertake the mission?" he asked, holding it toward me. "If so, these are copies of the messages which will confirm the news you carry. Official confirmation, as I said before, will come by the first available mail."
It is not given to every man in his life to convey news of great import and joy to a fellow being, and suddenly a vivid picture of Monsieur Périgord as I had last seen him came to my vision. I reached forward impulsively and seized the envelope from his hand, and thrust it into my pocket.
"Will I undertake it, monsieur?" I asked. "Of course I shall. I would rather be the bearer of this packet than any other in the world!"