ds. "It was, as he called it, simple police work. He had,
without arousing suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just
as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the late-lamented Hagan,
and escorted him across in the mail-boat. We have helped false news
over to the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport. My job was
something much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a
spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last
minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth
second of the eleventh hour."

"Why did you not cut out your difficulties by just stopping him from
going to Essex? At a word from you his Chief would have refused
leave."

Dawson smiled at me in a fashion which I find intensely aggravating.
He has no tact; when he feels superior, he lets one see it plainly.

"The fat would have been in the fire then," exclaimed he. "Suppose he
lay low for a day or two, took French leave, and went. I should have
been off his track. Shadowing is all very well, but it does not always
succeed in a crowded district like the Three Towns. If he had got away
without me beside him, the man might have reached Essex and done there
what he pleased. Besides, he might have had accomplices unknown to me.
No, it was the only possible course to give him leave and follow him
up close. Then whatever he did would be under my own eye."

Dawson gulped down a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly
congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. "Who is this man of
yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us?
What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Essex at all? He ought to
be a Devon man."

"He isn't, anyway. I have been making close inquiries. Though he has
been with us for sixteen years, he did come originally from somewhere
in the East. The man is one of the best I have--never drinks, keeps
good time, and works hard. He makes big wages, and carries them
virtuously home to his wife. He has money in the savings bank, and
holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must have wasted the good toil
of years. I can't imagine any one less likely to take German gold than
this man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your bonnet, Dawson? To a
police officer every one is a probable criminal, but some of us now
and then are passably honest. I will bet my commission that Maynard is
honest."

Dawson sniffed. "The honest men, with the excellent characters an