Grant drew a little sigh of relief as, in response to his invitation, the door of his room was opened and his long-expected visitor arrived. He rose at once to his feet. For a person whose enthusiasms were chiefly latent, his manner was almost exuberant.
“Colonel Hodson,” he declared, “you’re the one man in the States I’ve been longing to have a chat with ever since I landed. I’m afraid I’m responsible for bringing you back from your vacation.”
The newcomer smiled slightly as he shook hands. He was a tall, fine-looking man, with strong features and a dignified carriage. His eyes wandered from Grant to Stoneham who was seated at the table writing a letter.
“This is my friend, Mr. Dan Stoneham, late editor of the New York,” Grant explained. “He is with me up to the eyes in this business. Dan, come here and shake hands with Colonel Hodson, head of the—well, what do you call your department now, Hodson? Home Secret Service it used to be before the word ‘Secret Service’ became taboo.”
“‘Service A’ we call it now,” Hodson confided. “Nothing much in a name, anyway. And nothing much in the job lately. I’d been over in Honolulu a month when they cabled for me.”
Grant pushed up an easy-chair, produced cigars, whisky and a syphon, and rang for ice.
“I was afraid they weren’t going to send for you after all,” he observed. “They didn’t seem in any way anxious to put me in touch with you. Tell me honestly, Hodson, what do they think of me in the Department?”
“They are interested,” the latter acknowledged, stretching himself out and lighting a cigar. “They have a great respect for your insight on all ordinary matters, but in the present instance they are inclined to think that you have a bee in your bonnet.”
“I was afraid so,” Grant admitted. “I’m not surprised at it.”
“They think that you’ve been mixing with the foreigners, and especially with the British, pretty freely, over on the other side,” Hodson continued, “and that you’ve got a lot of un-American stuff in your blood. You know Secret Service and foreign plots and all these ‘German cutn Japanese’ scares don’t cut much ice in Washington these days. You should hear Senator Ross on the subject.”
“I’ve heard him,” Grant groaned. “I know the spirit, too, and I know perfectly well, Hodson, that if I’d been living in America for the last twenty years and hadn’t been out of it except as a tourist, I should probably be feeling exactly the same way. Ross is wrong. I should have been wrong. There’s a very terrible crisis looming up before us. You and I, Hodson, are going to avert the greatest calamity with which the world has ever been threatened.”
“Let me warn you,” Hodson said, “my instructions are to go dead slow with you. I am to do nothing which will make a laughing stock of the Department or which will evoke even questions from nations with whom we are upon friendly terms.”
“I quite understand your position,” Grant assured him. “When you’re convinced, as you will be soon, you’ll be with me body and soul. Until then, I’ll take you by the hand carefully.”
“Let’s get to work then,” Hodson suggested. “Give me an outline of your suspicions and show me the loose threads that you can’t lay hold of yourself.”
“Right!” Grant declared. “First of all then. In Monte Carlo I came across a plot to prevent that invitation being sent to America to join the Pact of Nations. I frustrated it. Over dinner some time I’ll tell you how. That doesn’t matter for the moment. The information upon which I acted came partly from the Princess von Diss, who was sent from Berlin to Monte Carlo to see what I was up to there, and partly from a dancing girl, the sweetheart of Count Itash, a young man who has held various diplomatic positions in Japan and whom I should describe as Japan’s arch intriguer, just as Cornelius Blunn is Germany’s. The information she gave me was correct.”
“Is this man Itash the sort of person who gives away his secrets to his feminine companions?” Hodson asked quietly.
“Not in the least,” Grant acknowledged. “As a matter of fact, we have only just discovered the truth. He talks in his sleep. The girl unfortunately is madly in love with him and only gives him away piecemeal. A few days ago in a fury of jealousy—Itash has brought another woman out here—she told me that he was worried about Japan’s contracts with the steel houses here, in addition to their importations from Germany. I spoke to Washington on the telephone. They have agreed to take the matter up. They have already applied to their own steel companies for particulars of steel supplied to Japan during the last two years, and when they get it, which they will before the Limitation of Armaments Conference, if will be a staggerer. That’s only a tiny little link in the chain, though. Japan’s clever enough to wriggle out of that, or to keep the thing going until it’s too late. It just helps, that’s all. Last night the girl was fool enough to try and shoot her rival. She escaped arrest and came to me. She declared that unless Itash promised to give up the other woman she would tell me wonderful things. We telephoned Itash, who was still ignorant of his nocturnal indiscretions and who came round at once. His attitude towards the girl was brutal and I am convinced that she was on the point of making a full disclosure of all she knew. Cornelius Blunn, however, had discovered the leakage, and Blunn, I am sorry to tell you, Hodson, is, I believe, on very friendly terms with certain members of your police organisation here. They managed to effect the girl’s arrest just as Itash had reduced her to a state of fury, and they did their best, acting under special orders, to prevent her saying a word to me. She told me one thing in French. She whispered that the whole secret of a great internal conspiracy against America could be discovered in a little gold casket which never leaves Blunn’s possession. It is at present in room twelve hundred and eight of this hotel.”
“Has she anything more to tell?” Hodson asked.
“I know that she has,” Grant assured him. “But, although the charge against her can scarcely be a very serious one, as the girl was uninjured, they refuse to allow me, or even a lawyer, whom I engaged, to see her at all. She is at present in the Tombs. The charge against her, I suppose, could be handled in many different ways, but can she be kept legally from seeing either a lawyer or a friend?”
“She cannot,” Hodson declared.
“Then let this be your start,” Grant begged. “Go to the Tombs this minute. You have the right to insist upon seeing her. Do so. Tell her you come from me. Here is my card.”
“Accompany me,” Hodson suggested after a moment’s reflection. “We will interview the young lady together.”
Colonel Hodson, it appeared, was after all a little sanguine. At Police Headquarters he left Grant in the waiting room while he made his way to visit a personage in authority. Instead of the few minutes he had mentioned, however, he was gone nearly half an hour. When he returned there was a marked change in his manner. He seemed, subconsciously, to be treating Grant with a little more respect.
“Well, you’re right, so far, Slattery,” he confessed. “There’s a conspiracy here to keep that young woman from communicating with anybody at all, a conspiracy which is entirely against police regulations and which is going to lead to a whole heap of trouble later on. However, there it is, and they’re in it deep enough to run a pretty considerable risk. They’ve tried every mortal bluff they can think of, but their present attitude clean gives the show away. In an hour’s time they will be compelled to let me visit her. Until then we’ll take a drive round and I’d like to hear a little more of your story. I’ll frankly admit, Slattery,” he acknowledged as they left the place together, “that my interest is growing.”
They drove about for an hour, and Grant confided to his companion a great deal of the result of his wanderings and investigations during the last two years. Hodson listened imperturbably. He realised the note of conviction in his companion’s tone but he himself kept an open mind. Notwithstanding his official position, he had the instincts and the outlook of a citizen. Deliberate warfare with its hideous wastage of human life and its ghastly uncertainty seemed to him a visionary idea, a phantasy of the disordered and over-imaginative brain. A single person of disordered mentality might brood upon such a cataclysm; no normal group of persons in these sober days was likely to tolerate the idea. All these little happenings and tendencies to which Grant alluded might so easily be traced to lesser things. He made only one comment.
“Supposing for a moment,” he said, “that there was the least truth in your prophecy and that a naval attack from outside was to be supplemented by an enormous and wide-reaching internal conspiracy, do you realise what a terrible reflection that would be upon my Department?”
“I can’t help it, Hodson,” Grant declared. “Of course I realise it. I’m not going to blame you. No one can be blamed for not searching for what they don’t believe exists, but I do beg you to remember that if there’s a thousand to one chance that my view of things is correct, you ought not to leave my side until we’re through with this business. And so far as you personally are concerned, now listen. During the last two years I have submitted between forty and fifty reports dealing with this matter to the Department in Washington. Have those reports been handed on to you?”
“Not one of them,” Hodson replied. “I had no idea, even, that you had ever made them.”
“Then you must remember,” Grant pointed out, “that at the worst, the chief responsibility rests with those higher up. My reports should every one of them have come to you, and you should have made the investigations on this side to which they pointed. Can you tell me offhand whether there are any great patriotic societies formed to keep Germans together in this country?”
“There’s one,” Hodson acquiesced. “‘Brothers in Love,’ they call it—kind of Odd Fellows affair. It exists chiefly for charity and does an enormous amount of good. It must have two or three million members.”
“Anything with the Japanese?”
“There is one, but I don’t know much about it,” Hodson confessed. “It is rather a different class thing, founded to teach the lower classes the arts of agriculture and to keep the others in touch with Japanese culture and literature.”
“Quite so,” Grant murmured. “I haven’t the faintest doubt that those societies are on the surface everything they appear to be. Neither have I the slightest doubt that behind them, committee behind committee, are the people who deal with Blunn and Itash.”
Hodson smiled a little doubtfully.
“I’m in a receptive frame of mind, Slattery,” he admitted, “but don’t try me too high. Processions, brass bands, and picnics are all I can think of in connection with the ‘Brothers in Love.’ The Japanese I never quite understood. Here we are back again. I see the governor’s car here. Now we ought to have some fun.”
Grant again waited for his friend, who this time was gone for a little more than ten minutes. When he returned there was a steely glint in his eye.
“Slattery,” he announced, “you win all round, so far as this girl’s concerned. They’ve had her up before headquarters while we’ve been away, discharged her, and they have the effrontery to assure me that they let her walk out of the court without asking where she was going to, or without having her followed. They’ve just turned her loose in New York and left us to hunt. I don’t like it. Come along!”
“Where to?” Grant asked.
“To see some friends of mine, who can tackle this job,” was the stern reply. “We ought to be able to find her before many hours are passed.”