The Chief Inspector pointed out O'Connor and the owner of the bag among the thinning crowd.
The ship's detective touched the latter on the arm.
"Sorry to trouble you, sir, but there's been a thief on board. We've caught him red-handed. That gentleman here," he indicated Pointer, "says one of the bags is one which you left on your seat. Will you kindly identify it when you've done here?"
"I strolled off," Pointer explained, "and found your bag gone when I got back. Luckily, some one saw the man making off with it."
"It was trying to pinch a bride's Paris bonnet really did for him," said the detective, with a laugh. "He might have got away with it but for that."
The man beside O'Connor gave a cheery ha, ha! and turned away to see about his passport.
"That's my bag, all right," he said, as he saw a battered kit-bag, with a newer one beside it, standing on a table in a sort of private cabin. "My initials on it. R.M.T. Here's my passport."
As the passport showed him to be Major-General Thompson, C.B., the purser handed it back with a bow, and a cold look at the detective. "That's all right, sir," he began.
"If you'll just unlock it as a matter of formality," the detective suggested, "in case of other claimants—"
"Certainly." General Thompson pulled out his keys, ran them through his fingers, and then shook his head.
"Where's that key gone to? Why, of course!" He stopped jingling them. "I left it tied to the handle, because of the Customs, you know. The chap who stole it must have bagged it."
"No keys whatever on him, sir," said the detective.
"Then he lost it, or dropped it overboard."
"Ah, he might have done that," the man agreed.
"I'll tell you what; I've got another key at home. I'll leave the bag with you, and send the key down. I'm in no hurry for it, provided I get it eventually." The general turned to go.
There was a pulse beating in the temple of his bronzed face. As soon as the door had closed behind him, the detective beckoned to another in an inner room, and working like madmen, they locked a life-buoy on to the bag, fastened both to a chain, and flung the whole very lightly far out of the special port-hole into the sea, keeping it away from the side of the boat with a long flexible steel rod which opened out swiftly.
"Mine-sweepers' gear," the detective said with a grin. "Now we'll see. I thought the general was a bit on hot plates as the talk went on."
Five minutes passed, ten were nearly over, when there was a very pretty little fountain to be seen at sea which greatly delighted those on deck, who decided it must have been a couple of porpoises off their usual beat. Those in the cabin hauled in the chain, and found a few bits of life-buoy and leather hanging to the padlock.
"Very neat. Meant just for you and me," said O'Connor. "Just enough to help hitch our combined wagons to the stars, without damaging the boat. And where's the proud inventor?"
"He was shown into another cabin when he walked out of this, and by now he'll be safely secured."
But he was more. He was dead, with a tiny bottle clenched in one hand. They never knew his real name.
"Good," said the two friends, "then we can go on deck again," and they thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful approach to England. They waited till the crowd was almost off the boat. Then they shook hands with three men, one of whom was Pointer's chief, and with whom they travelled up in a special guarded car.
Safely in his own rooms at the Yard, Pointer handed over a pocket book sewn into oiled silk, and went off for a wash and brush up, feeling like a boy home from school, now that his part in safeguarding that paper was done. The paper which he believed to have cost the life of Professor Charteris, of his daughter, and of the man with the bag, as well as severe bodily injuries, so he trusted, to the two men with whom O'Connor and he had struggled in the compartment before they could get them out on to the line.
The "poem" on the thin paper was re-written within the hour by the Home Office expert. It explained the care taken to regain it. It was a paper that shook the world when it was broadcasted later. But the cipher would have been insoluble without the code-word. The Home Office had that code-word. It had cost a British life for every letter in it.
It was decided that news should be circulated at once through discreetly indiscreet channels that the Yard was in possession of a couple of Bulgarian letters and a poem which they believed contained secret intelligence bearing on Red activities in that country, but which they were unable to solve. Copies would be sent post-haste to a few thoroughly untrustworthy Russian interpreters marked on the books as in the Bolsheviks' pay. They would be asked to help. A reward would be offered.
It was about half-past two on the next day, Tuesday, when a constable opened Pointer's door at the Yard. "A lady to see you by appointment, sir."
"Show the lady in. And bring in the gentleman who's been waiting in Watts' room at the same time."
Sibella entered with a sort of rush. She looked shocking. So ill, so worn, so white. Pointer thought of some plant whose roots are perishing. It seemed to him as though all the healthy, multifold ties between a woman and the world around her had been cut through in this case, and that Sibella was dying by inches of some fungus, some mildew, of the spirit.
With all her impetuous entrance, she sank wearily into a chair. But her eyes stared at him almost as her father's might have done.
"You telephoned me that there were important developments."
"They're coming. But first I want you to answer a few questions, and to hear some facts. Ah, here's Count di Monti."
Sibella sprang up with a gasp. Di Monti, too, looked unprepared for the meeting.
"Please sit down, both of you," the Chief Inspector went on, "it may take some time, this preliminary clearing of the ground. Miss Scarlett, first of all, the information you gave Count di Monti about the meetings in the studio had nothing whatever to do with your cousin's death."
"Oh!" It was a cry of mingled anguish and relief, of horror and joy. "Oh, is that true?" Her eyes went from him to the count, and back again.
"If you were told to the contrary," Pointer went on very sternly—
"I never told you that was the reason. I don't know the reason. How can I? I had nothing to do with that death." Di Monti's voice was hard and strident as he interrupted.
Sibella turned on him. She evidently dared not trust herself to speak. She only looked.
"If this man told you anything else, Miss Scarlett," Pointer went on, "it was because it suited his purpose that you should think that you, too, in a sense, were a contributory cause—"
"In a sense!" Sibella covered her face. "Oh, it's not possible! Not possible! No one would make their worst enemy suffer what I've suffered since Rose's death. I've been down, down, down," she broke off, shuddering. "I thought that I had killed her in everything but actually striking the blow. That my hand had directed his—I mean—" she stopped herself. "Since they brought her body home I've thought that it was my doing."
She was shuddering from head to foot.
"I want to know the whole story, Miss Scarlett. As for the count—well, that will come later."
He looked hard at di Monti, and the count's jaws tightened.
"This man has no authority to ask you a single question, Sibella." The Italian strode over to her and caught her hand in his. "If I made you suffer, I had to."
"Why?" Her eyes fastened themselves with an incredulous stare on him, as though she saw a stranger before her. "Why did you have to make me suffer? And so terribly? Why you—me?"
She did not give him time to answer. And he looked as though he would