made, if the populace could have
got hold of young Harry Beachman it would have torn him to pieces;
for it was then discovered that the drowned man was no less a person
than this Herr Axel von Ziegelmundt, and that they had not only
spent the greater part of that particular day shut up in the former's
room in the Portsmouth hotel, but had been together up to the very
moment when the excursion steamer had started on its moonlight trip
to Alum Bay and to the bringing about of that providential accident
which had prevented the State affairs of an unsuspecting nation
from being betrayed to a secret foe.

What followed was, in the face of this, of course, but natural. John
Beachman was suspended immediately, and his son's arrest ordered.
It served no purpose that he denied indignantly the charge of
being a traitor, and swore by every sacred thing that the hours
spent in his room at the hotel were passed in endeavouring to
master the intricacies of the difficult German card game, Skaat,
and that never in all their acquaintance had one word touching
upon the country or the country's affairs passed between Axel von
Ziegelmundt and himself, so help him God! It was in vain, also, that
Greta Hilmann--shouting hysterically her belief in him and begging
wildly that if he must be put into prison she might be taken with him
"and murdered when you murder him if he is to be court-martialled
and shot, you wretched blunderers!"--it was in vain that Greta
Hilmann clung to him and fought with all her woman's strength to
keep the guard from laying hands upon him or to tear her from his
side; the outraged country demanded him, and took him in spite of
all. Nor did it turn the current of sympathy in his direction that,
crazed when they tore him from her, this frantic creature had gone
from swoon to swoon until her senses left her entirely, and the end
was--tragedy.

The full details were never forthcoming. The bare facts were that
she was carried back to Beachman's house in a state of hysteria
bordering close upon insanity, and that when, under orders from the
Admiralty, that house and all its contents were impounded pending
the fullest inquiry into the dock master's books and accounts,
the Admiral Superintendent and the appointed auditor entered into
possession, her condition was found to be so serious that it was
decided not to insist upon her removal for a day or two at least.
A nurse was procured from the naval hospital and put in char