or other of us must positively have been the person to do so.
Well, _I_ did not; MacInery did not; Grimsdick did not. And yet,
as you know, the 'wiring' was done--we should never stand a chance of
knowing to whom, nor by whom, but for the accident which deflected
the course of the message."

"H'm! Yes! I don't think," commented Cleek reflectively. "It won't
wash, that theory; no, decidedly it won't wash. Pardon? Oh, no,
Sir Charles, I am not casting any doubt upon the telegraph operator's
statement of the manner in which he received the message; it is his
judgment that is at fault, not his veracity. Of course, there have
been cases--very rare ones, happily--of one wire automatically
tapping another through, as he suggested, there being a break and an
overlapping of the broken wire on to the sound one; but in the
present instance there isn't a ghost of a chance of such a thing
having happened. In other words, Sir Charles, it is as unsound in
theory as it is false in fact. Mr. Narkom has been telling me on the
way here that the operator accounted for the sudden starting of the
message to the falling of a storm-snapped wire upon an uninjured
one, and for its abrupt cessation to the slipping off of that broken
wire under the influence of the strong gale. Now, as we entered
the town and proceeded through it, I particularly noted the fact
that no broken wires were anywhere visible, nor was there sight or
sign of men being engaged in repairing one."

"Ah, yes," agreed Sir Charles, a trifle dubiously, "that may be quite
so, Mr. Cleek; but, if you will pardon my suggesting it, is there
not the possibility of a flaw in your reasoning upon that point?
The wire in question may not have been located in that particular
district through which you were travelling."

"I don't think there is any chance of my having made an error of that
sort, Sir Charles," replied Cleek, smiling. "Had I been likely to
do so, our friend the telegraph operator would have prevented it. He
recognized at once that the communication was coming over the
wire from the dockyard, I am told; and I have observed that every
one of the dockyard wires is intact. I fancy when we come down to
the bottom of it we shall discover that it was not the dockyard
wire which 'tapped' a message from some other, but that the dockyard
wire was being 'tapped' itself, and that the storm, causing a
momentary interruption in the carrying on of that 'tapping' process,
allowed a port