Chapter Six. In the “Personal” Column.

I had a good deal to do before I could leave for England.

From Marseilles I left for St. Étienne and Chartres, in both of which towns Jules Cauvin had been known in pre-war days. But little additional information which was of value could I pick up, though I was specially struck by the fact that all who knew him laughed at the bare idea of his having blossomed out into a motor expert. They all seemed equally convinced on this point. One man even ventured the suggestion that, if Cauvin was indeed making huge sums of money from a motor invention, he must have stolen the idea from someone else.

“And, believe me, monsieur,” ejaculated the voluble Frenchman, “he would not be above doing so. Jules Cauvin an inventor! Phew! he is too lazy; he never did any work if he could help it.” However, as I was tolerably sure in my own mind that Cauvin was being handsomely paid for services of quite another kind, this did not help me much.

At length, after a journey of a week, during which time I spent only one night in bed, I found myself late one afternoon back in Paris, chatting with my colleagues, Madame Gabrielle Soyez and Henri Aubert, in the former’s cosy little flat au troisième, in the Boulevard Péreire. To both I gave certain very definite instructions. To the elegant little Frenchwoman I added:

“You will proceed to the Grosvenor Hotel in London, and from there will keep the surveillance I have indicated. Remain there until you hear from me. Report progress frequently—at least every other day—in the personal column of The Times.”

I could scarcely refrain from smiling as I turned from the vivacious Frenchwoman—a Parisian in every detail of her chic appearance—to Henri Aubert, who was to be our colleague in the undertaking we had in hand. Aubert was a sad-faced, rather melancholy looking middle-aged man, with a face from which every shred of intelligence seemed to have vanished. He looked, indeed, exactly like one of those middle-class nonentities, colourless and featureless, who, by the mysterious workings of the mind of the great god Democracy, manage to get themselves elected as municipal councillors, or by superhuman endeavour rise to the position of advocate—and never do any good. But behind his unpromising exterior, which, in fact, was one of his chief assets, since it practically freed him from any possibility of suspicion, was a keen intelligence, trained in every detail of our craft, a patience that knew no wearying on the trail, and a judgment which closed like a steel trap on the essential factor in a complicated situation, and, once having secured a hold, never let go. I knew him well and esteemed him highly, and he possessed the entire trust of the astute Armand Hecq, a trust difficult to win, but, once won, fully and freely given.

To Aubert I explained the situation as fully as I could, and, though I knew him to be a model of circumspection, I ventured on a hint of the extreme care and discretion necessary in the delicate affair if we were to succeed in tracing the source of Cauvin’s mysterious rise to sudden wealth. He listened to me with a ghost of a smile on his thin lips, but he was evidently piqued.

“Perhaps, Monsieur Sant, someone has been telling you I am a confirmed babbler?” he said dryly; and I laughed; the idea of Aubert “babbling” had its humorous aspect.

“I think we understand each other, Monsieur Aubert,” I said. “I don’t mean to cast any reflections on your discretion. But you know the people we have to deal with.”

“Quite well, monsieur,” replied Aubert, with a real smile this time. “We have a difficult job before us. They have a dangerous gang over in England just now. Pierre Gartin was murdered there only last week—shot in a street row unquestionably got up for the occasion. Of course the assassin escaped in the crowd. I think we had better take our revolvers.” He spoke as coolly as though his revolver were his umbrella.

I was startled. Pierre Gartin was one of the most capable men we had, and I knew he had been engaged on a piece of work very similar to that which we had in hand. In my absence I had not heard of his death.

“No, I had not heard,” I replied. “But I agree with you that our revolvers might be useful.”

Aubert’s news told me that our Hun antagonists must have some very big plan in hand. Even the most desperate of spies draws the line at murder, unless he finds himself in an impasse with no other way out. This is not, of course, from any special reluctance to taking the life of an enemy, but simply as a matter of self-preservation. For we are so peculiarly constituted that we tolerate calmly the work of pestiferous agents whose activities are a greater peril to the community than a dozen murders would be, while the killing of a single man brings a hornets’ nest about the murderer’s ears. I knew therefore, that since the Huns had gone so far as to “remove” Gartin, they must be engaged in work of supreme importance, and must have been quite aware that he was hot on their trail. Truly we had an interesting prospect before us. But we were all tolerably well used to danger, and I do not think it affected any of us.

“Only last night,” said Aubert, “Cauvin entertained Bonnier, of the Admiralty, and no doubt he learned something from him. I have found out that he has been lending Bonnier a good deal of money. Bonnier has recently got mixed up with a fast set, and he has been spending a great deal more money than his income warrants. When people of that kind begin to consort with rogues of Cauvin’s stamp it usually means only one thing.”

“No doubt that is true enough,” I replied; “but for the present we must take even the risk of leaving Bonnier alone. I want absolute evidence that Cauvin’s money comes from Germany, even though he actually gets it from a secret source in England. It is not enough for me to prove either that Bonnier is selling secrets or that Cauvin is buying them. I want to prove that Cauvin’s money is German, and I am going to do it. Bonnier can wait; if we get Cauvin we are tolerably sure to obtain sufficient evidence to lay Bonnier by the heels at any time. In fact, we can remove him quietly as soon as Cauvin is out of the way. I shall leave for England to-morrow.”

This I did, and twenty-four hours later I was in London. I decided first to investigate Cauvin’s supposed motor invention, and made my way to the office of a well-known patent agent in Chancery Lane. He had done some business before for me and greeted me warmly. I knew him so thoroughly that I did not hesitate to tell him exactly what I was after.

“But, my dear Sant,” he said, “if this supposed invention is being kept as a secret to stagger the motoring world, it is not likely to have been patented yet by either Cauvin or anyone else. Depend upon it, if there is anything in it, it is being manufactured secretly, and will not be patented until it is absolutely ready for the market. To patent it now would simply be setting every motor expert in the country at work on similar lines. You know the patent lists are watched with the keenest scrutiny. My clerk is looking into the matter, and we shall soon know whether Cauvin has patented anything.”

This was a surprise for me. I could not, of course, however much I might suspect him, absolutely rule out of my calculations the possibility that even Cauvin might have hit upon some lucky idea, as so many inventors have done, without knowing much of the technicalities of the subject. I did not forget that the safety-pin was the invention of a lazy workman. And I knew that if I took any active steps against Cauvin and made a mistake—if by some miraculous chance his sudden wealth was honestly acquired—the consequences would be serious.

“Well,” I said, when we had been assured that no patent of any kind had been taken out by Cauvin, “what am I to do? I can’t go to every big motor engineer in England and ask him if he is manufacturing a secret device invented by Jules Cauvin.”

My friend thought for a few moments. “I think you had better see L—,” he said at last. “If there is anything big in hand some kind of whisper of it is sure to have got about, and he would be the first to hear. I will telephone him at once; we shall catch him in his office on the Viaduct.”

A few minutes later we were in Holborn in L—’s office; he was one of the magnates of the motoring world. I explained the position.

“You can make your mind easy on that point,” he said emphatically. “There is nothing going in the trade to-day big enough to produce the amount of money your man is evidently receiving. If there were, I must have heard of it; it could not be kept secret. You remember the Marx carburettor? Well, we knew for six months that it was coming, though every effort was made to keep it secret. What we did not know was the exact secret; but you know how it took the market by storm.”

This, even though it were only negative evidence, seemed to establish conclusively the fact that Cauvin’s money, whatever might be its source, was not derived from the motor trade. I made up my mind that this much at least was certain.

Next day I travelled down to old-world Chester, where I very speedily discovered that there was in Whitefriars no house numbered 118, and no trace of any person named Wheatley, while the aged vicar of St. Mary’s knew nothing of the marriage of “Captain James Easterbrook.”

Everything was fictitious—everything, that is, except the silver-printed wedding card and the clinging perfume of stag-leaved geranium.

What did the bogus card indicate? Why had Jules Cauvin’s unknown correspondent gone to the trouble of having it printed? And why, in defiance of all social custom, had it been scented with such a perfume as that of the stag-leaved geranium? I felt tolerably sure that here lay the key of the mystery, and that when I laid my hand on the sender of that mysterious card I should be very near indeed to the knowledge of the real source of the strange sequence of events which had raised the good-for-nothing son of an obscure French postman to a dazzling position in the world of society.

Such was the problem I had to solve. And the key to it was just one bogus wedding card impregnated with the slowly dying odour of geranium. I cursed my luck as I reflected on the magnitude of the issues at stake and the paucity of the tools with which I had to work. For if “Captain James Easterbrook” was unknown in Chester, the home of his supposed bride, what was my chance of penetrating his disguise? Yet, somehow or other, we must succeed. That Cauvin was receiving money from England I was absolutely convinced, and I was determined to take this chance—the best we had had—of locating the real men behind the Hidden Hand in England.

Next day I left Chester by a very early train for London. When we reached Rugby I bought a copy of The Times, and the first thing that caught my eye was a cryptically worded message at the head of the personal column. It conveyed to me the startling news that Madame Gabrielle had been recognised by some alien agent of whom she was highly suspicious, had left the Grosvenor Hotel in her alarm, and had returned to Paris!