ge of
her; but at some period during the fourth night of that nurse's
attendance--and when she, worn out by constant watching, slept in
her chair--the half-delirious patient arose, and, leaving a note
to say that life had lost all its brightness for her, and if they
cared to find her they might look for her in the sea, vanished
entirely. She could scarcely have hit upon a worse thing for the
evil repute of her lover's name or her own. For those who had never
known her personally were quick to assert that this was proof
enough of how the thing had been managed. In short, that she,
too, was a spy, and that she had adopted this subterfuge to get
back to Germany before the scent grew hot and the law could lay a
hand upon her. Those who had known her took a more merciful view so
far as she was concerned, but one which made things look all the
blacker for her lover. What could her desperation and her utter
giving up all hope even before the man was put on trial mean if
it was not that she knew he was guilty, knew he would never get off
with his life, and that her suicide was a tacit admission of this?

CHAPTER XVI

Meanwhile public indignation ran high, the investigation of the dock
master's books, papers, and accounts proceeded _in camera_, and all
England waited breathlessly for the result to be made known.

Thus matters stood when on Thursday night at half-past seven
o'clock--exactly one week after the discovery of that packet on the
body of the drowned man--an amazing thing happened, a thing which
smacked almost of magic, and put to shame all that had gone before
in the way of mystery, surprise, and terror.

The wildest storm that had been known on that coast for years had
been raging steadily ever since daybreak and was raging still. A
howling wind, coming straight over the Channel from France, was
piling ink-black seas against an ink-black shore, and all the devils
of the pit seemed to be loose in the noisy darkness.

In the suspended dock master's house the Admiral Superintendent,
Sir Charles Fordeck, together with his private secretary, Mr. Paul
Grimsdick, and the auditor, Mr. Alexander MacInery, who had been
continuing their investigations since morning, were now coming
within sight of the work's end--the only occupants of a locked and
guarded room, outside of which a sentry was posted, while round
about the house in the stormy outer darkness other guards patrolled
ceaselessly. Over the books Sir Charl