ike an Aldershot 'hut', and that the door I heard was round the
corner to my left. A knot of men must be gathered there, entering it
by turns. Having expectorated noisily, I followed the tin wall to my
_right,_ and turning a corner strolled leisurely on, passing signs of
domesticity, a washtub, a water-butt, then a tiled approach to an
open door. I now was aware of the corner of a second building, also
of zinc, parallel to the first, but taller, for I could only just see
the eave. I was just going to turn off to this as a more promising
field for exploration, when I heard a window open ahead of me in my
original building.

I am afraid I am getting obscure, so I append a rough sketch of the
scene, as I partly saw and chiefly imagined it. It was window (A)
that I heard open. From it I could just distinguish through the fog a
hand protrude, and throw something out--cigar-end? The hand, a clean
one with a gold signet-ring, rested for an instant afterwards on the
sash, and then closed the window.

[Illustration: Sketch--Memmert Salvage Depot.}

My geography was clear now in one respect. That window belonged to
the same room as the hanging door (B); for I distinctly heard the
latter open and shut again, opposite me on the other side of the
building. It struck me that it might be interesting to see into that
room. 'Play the game,' I reminded myself, and retreated a few yards
back on tiptoe, then turned and sauntered coolly past the window,
puffing my villainous pipe and taking a long deliberate look into the
interior as I passed--the more deliberate that at the first instant
I realized that nobody inside was disturbing himself about me. As I
had expected (in view of the fog and the time) there was artificial
light within. My mental photograph was as follows: a small room with
varnished deal walls and furnished like an office; in the far
right-hand corner a counting-house desk, Grimm sitting at it on a
high stool, side-face to me, counting money; opposite him in an
awkward attitude a burly fellow in seaman's dress holding a diver's
helmet. In the middle of the room a deal table, and on it something
big and black. Lolling on chairs near it, their backs to me and their
faces turned towards the desk and the diver, two men--von Bruening and
an older man with a bald yellow head (Dollmann's companion on the
steamer, beyond a doubt). On another chair, with its back actually
tilted against the window, Dollmann.

Such were the prin