Blithely Mr. Blensop addressed himself to the safe.
"There has been an accident of some sort, Colonel Stanistreet?" Lanyard enquired civilly, nodding toward the shattered French window.
"A burglary, sir."
"The criminal escaped?"
Stanistreet nodded. "Our watchman surprised him, and was shot for his pains—not seriously, I'm happy to say. The burglar got himself tangled up in that window, but extricated in time, and went over the garden wall before we could determine which way he had taken."
"I trust you lost nothing of value?"
Stanistreet shrugged. "Unhappily, we did—a diamond necklace, the property of my sister-in-law, and—ah—a document we could ill afford to part with. … But you offered to show me credentials, I believe."
"Such as they are," Lanyard replied. "My passports and letters were stolen from me. But these, I think, should serve as well to prove my bona fides."
He laid out in order upon the desk his plunder from the safe aboard the U-boat—all but the money—the three cipher codes, the log, the diary of the commander, the directory of German secret agents, and such other documents as he had selected.
The first Colonel Stanistreet took up with a dubious frown which swiftly lightened, yielding, as he pursued his examination into the papers and began to recognize their surpassing value to the Allied cause, to a subdued glimmer of gratulatory excitement.
But he was at pains to satisfy himself as to the authenticity of each paper in turn, providing a lull for which
