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I insisted on being obtuse, for though this fencing with an unstrung girl was hateful work, the quest was at stake. We were going to Norderney, come what might, and sooner or later we must see Dollmann. It was no use promising not to. I had given no pledge to von Brüning, and I would give none to her. Against her own father?
What a joy it is, when beset with doubts, to find a bed-rock necessity, however unattainable! We fastened on this one and reasoned back from it. The first lesson was that, however many and strong were the enemies we had to contend with, our sole overt fee must be Dollmann. The issue of the struggle must be known only to ourselves and him.
Even on your own showing Dollmann treated you badly discourteously, say: though you pretended not to have seen it. You want a motive to neutralize that, and induce you to revisit him in a friendly way. I supplied it, or rather I only encouraged von Brüning to supply it. 'Why revisit him, after all? said Davies. 'Oh, come 'But don't you see what a hideous fix you've put me in?
So is any invasion. But it's thorough; it's German. No other country could do it. It's all dawning on me by Jove! It will be at the Wash much the nearest, and as sandy as this side. 'How's Dollmann been? I asked. 'Polite, but queer and jumpy. It's too long a story. 'Clara? 'She's all right. By Jove! Carruthers never mind. We found a night-bell at the villa door and rang it lustily.
THE door of a room on the ground floor was opened to us by a man-servant. As we entered the rattle of a piano stopped, and a hot wave of mingled scent and cigar smoke struck my nostrils. The first thing I noticed over Davies's shoulder, as he preceded me into the room, was a woman the source of the perfume I decided turning round from the piano as he passed it and staring him up and down with a disdainful familiarity that I at once hotly resented. She was in evening dress, pronounced in cut and colour; had a certain exuberant beauty, not wholly ascribable to nature, and a notable lack of breeding. Another glance showed me Dollmann putting down a liqueur glass of brandy, and rising from a low chair with something of a start; and another, von Brüning, lying back in a corner of a sofa, smoking; on the same sofa, vis-
'You'll be horribly in the way down there, and we shall never get any supper if you keep them yarning. 'And it's now a quarter-past eight o'clock, grumbled Herr Böhme from his corner behind the hood. Dollmann submitted, and excused himself, and the launch steamed away. 'I think I twig, said Davies, as he helped, almost hoisted, me aboard. 'Rather risky though eh?
Quick as thought I was back in my old position, to find my view barred by a cretonne curtain. It was in one piece, with no chink for my benefit, but it did not hang straight, bulging towards me under the pressure of something human shoulders by the shape. Dollmann, I concluded, was still in his old place.
Davies no longer feared to face the imbroglio at Norderney; and that day fortune had given us a new and potent weapon against Dollmann; precisely how potent we could not tell, for we had only a glimpse of his past, and his exact relations with the Government were unknown to us. But we knew who he was. Using this knowledge with address, could we not wring the rest from him?
'Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course, explained Davies, feeling for his armour again. 'Did he seem to know them well? I pursued, inconsequently. 'Oh, yes, very well. Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed. 'That was the last I saw of him, he said. 'We sailed, as I told you, at daybreak next morning.
All countries, Germany included, have spies in their service, dirty though necessary tools; but Dollmann in such intimate association with the principal plotters on this side; Dollmann rich, influential, a power in local affairs it was clear he was no ordinary spy. And here I detected a hesitation in Davies's rough sketch, a reluctance, as it were, to pursue a clue to its logical end.
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