I thrust the
slips of paper in their canvas covering into my trousers pocket. I must
not be found in that room. With trembling hands I started to put the
things back in the bag. Those slips of paper, I reflected as I worked,
at least rent the veil of mystery enveloping the corpse that lay
stiffening in the next room. This, at any rate, was certain: German or
American or hyphenate, Henry Semlin, manufacturer and spy, had voyaged
from America to England not for the purposes of trade but to get hold of
that mutilated document now reposing in my pocket. Why he had only got
half the letter and what had happened to the other half was more than I
could say ... it sufficed for me to know that its importance to somebody
was sufficient to warrant a journey on its behalf from one side to the
other of the Atlantic.

As I opened the bag my fingers encountered a hard substance, as of
metal, embedded in the slack of the lining in the joints of the mouth.
At first I thought it was a coin, then I felt some kind of clasp or
fastening behind it and it seemed to be a brooch. Out came my pocket
knife again and there lay a small silver star, about as big as a
regimental cap badge, embedded in the thin canvas. It bore an
inscription. In stencilled letters I read:

O2 G
Abt. VII.

Here was Dr. Semlin's real visiting-card.

I held in my hand a badge of the German secret police.

You cannot penetrate far behind the scenes in Germany without coming
across the traces of Section Seven of the Berlin Police Presidency, the
section that is known euphemistically as that of the Political Police.
Ostensibly it attends to the safety of the monarch, and of distinguished
personages generally, and the numerous suite that used to accompany the
Kaiser on his visits to England invariably included two or three
top-hatted representatives of the section.

The ramifications of _Abteilung Sieben_ are, in reality, much wider. It
does such work in connection with the newspapers as is even too dirty
for the German Foreign Office to touch, comprising everything from the
launching of personal attacks in obscure blackmailing sheets against
inconvenient politicians to the escorting of unpleasantly truthful
foreign correspondents to the frontier. It is the obedient handmaiden of
the Intelligence Department of both War Office and Admiralty in Germany,
and renders faithful service to the espionage which is constantly
maintained on officials, politicians, the clergy a