from among the
shipbuilding trades unions--accounting for every one, so that no man
can be away from his post without our knowing and shadowing him. It is
not easy to get any information out of the country nowadays. The
secret wireless stories are all humbug. Wireless gives itself away at
once. If one wants to get news to the enemy, one has to carry it
oneself, or hire some one else to carry it. Most of that which goes we
allow to go for our own purposes. I am pretty sure that no dockyard
hand could get anything away to Holland without our knowledge, so that
it doesn't matter whether they are trustworthy or not so long as we're
not fools enough to trust them. You may not know it, but I have my own
Yard men among your messengers here in this building, and among your
clerks too."

"What!" cried the First Lord. "You don't even trust the Admiralty!"

"Least of all," said Dawson grimly. "If I was head of the German
Secret Service, I would have my own man as your private secretary."

The First Lord sat down gasping. Jacquetot nodded kindly to Dawson,
and laughed in his grim old way. "You are the man we want," said he.

"I am not thinking much of the dockyard hands," went on Dawson; "I can
look after them. They're all provided for. The danger is in the gossip
of a seaport town. I have lived in Portsmouth for years, and Plymouth
is just like it. You may take my word for it that the arrival of the
_Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ in dock at Devonport will be known all over
the Three Towns half an hour after they get there. Their mission will
be discussed in every bar, and it won't be difficult to make a pretty
useful guess. Here is a disaster in the South Seas--which will be
published all over the country by to-morrow morning--and here are two
of our fastest battle-cruisers summoned in hot haste from Scotland to
be cleaned and loaded for a long voyage. Any child, let alone a
longshoreman, could put the two things together. 'So the _Intrepid_
and _Terrific_ are off to the South Seas to biff old Fritz in the
eye.' That is what they will say in the Three Towns where there must
be hundreds of men--British subjects, too, the swine, and many of them
natural born--who would take risks to shove the news through to
Holland if they could get enough dirty money for it. Our worst spies
are not German, you bet; they are Irish and Scotch and Welsh and
English. That's where our difficulties come in. I am not afraid of the
dockyards, but the goss