"Ach!" he said. "The man they are to arrest. And you have the number."

"That was Capper--Capper, formerly of the Belgian office--kicked out for drunkenness. One time he sold out Downing Street in the matter of the Lord Fisher letters; you remember the scandal when they came to light--his majesty, the kaiser's, Kiel speech referring to them. He is a good stalking horse."

Koch's suspicion had left him. Still gripping the automatic, he sat down on the edge of the operating chair, regarding the other man respectfully.

"Come--come, Doctor Koch; you and I can not continue longer at cross-purposes." The captain spoke with terse displeasure. "This man Capper showed you nothing to prove his claims, yet you come back to this room and threaten my life on the strength of a drunkard's bare word. What his mission is you know; how he got that number, which is the number I have shown you on my ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse--you understand how such things are managed. I happen to know, however, because it was my business to know, that Capper left Marseilles for Malta aboard La Vendee four days ago; he was not expected to go beyond Malta."

Koch caught him up: "But the fellow told me his boat didn't stop at Malta--was warned by wireless to proceed at all speed to Alexandria, for fear of the Breslau, known to be in the Adriatic." Woodhouse spread out his hands with a gesture of finality.

"There you are! Capper finds himself stranded in Alexandria, knows somehow of your position as a man of the Wilhelmstrasse--such things can not be hid from the underground workers; comes here to explain himself to you and excuse himself for the loss of his number. Is there anything more to be said except that we must keep a close watch on him?"

The physician rose and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his back. The automatic bobbed against the tails of his long coat as he walked. After a minute's restless striding, he broke his step before the desk, jerked open the drawer, and dropped the weapon in it. Back to where Woodhouse was sitting he stalked and held out his right hand stiffly.

"Your pardon. Number Nineteen Thirty-two! For my suspicion I apologize. But, you sec my position--a very delicate one." Woodhouse rose, grasped the doctor's hand, and wrung it heartily.

"And now," he said, "to keep this fellow Capper in sight until the Princess Mary sails and I aboard her as Captain Woodhouse, of Wady Haifa. The man might trip us all up."

"He will not; be sure of that," Koch growled, helping Woodhouse into his coat and leading the way to the folding doors. "I will have Caesar attend to him the minute he comes back to report where Capper is stopping."

"Until when?" the captain asked, pausing at the gate, to which Koch had escorted him.

"Here to-morrow night at nine," the doctor answered, and the gate shut behind him. Captain Woodhouse, alone under the shadowing trees of Queen's Terrace, drew in a long breath, shook his shoulders and started for the station and the midnight train to Alexandria.

CHAPTER V

A FERRET

CONSIDER the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria. Even to the guard, unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing. But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate has its victim pushed into a corner. So submerged was Capper under the flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station--a tall, quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his white livery. The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class carriage behind the one in which Capper rode.

Here was Capper--poor old Hardluck Billy Capper--floored again, and just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor strain of self-pity under the brown bowler.