When Barbara reached the Chief's ante-room she found it full of people. Mr. Marigold was there, chatting with Captain Strangwise who seemed to be just taking his leave; there was a short, fat, Jewish-looking man, very resplendently dressed with a large diamond pin in his cravat and a small, insignificant looking gentleman with a gray moustache and the red rosette of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole. Matthews came out of the Chief's room as Barbara entered the outer office.
"Miss Mackwayte," he said, "we are all so shocked and so very, sorry..."
"Mr. Matthews," she said hastily in a low voice, "never mind about that now. I must see the Chief at once. It is most urgent."
Matthews gesticulated with his arm round the room.
"All these people, excepting the officer there, are waiting to see him, Miss, and he's got a dinner engagement at eight..."
"It is urgent, Mr. Matthews, I tell you. If you won't take my name in, I shall go in myself!"
"Miss Mackwayte, I daren't interrupt him now. Do you know who's with him...?"
Strangwise crossed the room to where Barbara was standing.
"I can guess what brings you here, Miss Mackwayte," he said gently. "I hope you will allow me to express my condolences'...?"
The girl shrank back, almost imperceptibly, yet Strangwise, whose eyes were fixed on her pale face, noticed the spontaneous recoil. The sunshine seemed to fade out of his debonair countenance, and for a moment Barbara Mackwayte saw Maurice Strangwise as very few people had ever seen him, stern and cold and hard, without a vestige of his constant smile. But the shadow lifted as quickly as it had fallen. His face had resumed its habitually engaging expression as he murmured:
"Believe me, I am truly sorry for you!"
"Thank you, thank you!" Barbara said hastily and brushed past him. She walked straight across the room to the door of the Chief's room, turned the handle and walked in.
The room was in darkness save for an electric reading lamp on the desk which threw a beam of light on the faces of two men thrust close together in eager conversation. One was the Chief, the other a face that Barbara knew well from the illustrated papers.
At the sound of the door opening, the Chief sprang to his feet.
"Oh, it's Miss Mackwayte," he said, and added something in a low voice to the other man who had risen to his feet. "My dear," he continued aloud to Barbara, "I will see you immediately; we must not be disturbed now. Matthews should have told you."
"Chief," cried Barbara, her hands clasped convulsively together, "you must hear me now. What I have to say cannot wait. Oh, you must hear me!"
The Chief looked as embarrassed as a man usually looks when he is appealed to in a busy moment by an extremely attractive girl.
"Miss Mackwayte," he said firmly but with great courtesy, "you must wait outside. I know how unnerved you are by all that you have gone through, but I am engaged just now. I shall be free presently."
"It is about my father, Chief," Barbara said in a trembling voice, "I have found out what they came to get!"
"Ah!" said the Chief and the other man simultaneously.
"We had better hear what she has to say!" said the other man, "but won't you introduce me first?"
"This is Sir Bristowe Marr, the First Sea Lord," said the Chief, bringing up a chair for Barbara, "Miss Mackwayte, my secretary, Admiral!"
Then in a low impassioned voice Barbara told her tale of the package entrusted to her by Nur-el-Din and its disappearance from her bedroom on the night of the murder. As she proceeded a deep furrow appeared between the Chief's bushy eyebrows and he stared absently at the blotting-pad in front of him. When the girl had finished her story, the Chief said:
"Lambelet ought to hear this, sir: he's the head of the French Intelligence, you know. He's outside now. Shall we have him in? Miss Mackwayte shall tell her story, and you can then hear what Lambelet has to say about this versatile young dancer."
Without waiting for further permission, he pressed a bell on the desk and presently Matthews ushered in the small man with the Legion of Honor whom Barbara had seen in the ante-room.
The Chief introduced the Frenchman and in a few words explained the situation to him. Then he turned to Barbara:
"Colonel Lambelet speaks English perfectly," he said, "so fire away and don't be nervous!"
When she had finished, the Chief said, addressing Lambelet:
"What do you make of it, Colonel?"
The little Frenchman made an expressive gesture.
"Madame has become aware of the interest you have been taking in her movements, mon cher. She seized the opportunity of this meeting with the daughter of her old friend to get rid of something compromising, a code or something of the kind, qui sait? Perhaps this robbery and its attendant murder was only an elaborate device to pass on some particularly important report of the movements of your ships... qui sait?"
"Then you are convinced in your own mind, Colonel, that this woman is a spy?" The clear-cut voice of the First Sea Lord rang out of the darkness of the room outside the circle of light on the desk.
"Mail certainement!" replied the Frenchman quietly. "Listen and you shall hear! By birth she is a Pole, from Warsaw, of good, perhaps, even, of noble family. I cannot tell you, for her real name we have not been able to ascertain... parbleu, it is impossible, with the Boches at Warsaw, hein? We know, however, that at a very early age, under the name of la petite Marcelle, she was a member of a troupe of acrobats who called themselves The Seven Duponts. With this troupe she toured all over Europe. Bien! About ten years ago, she went out to New York as a singer, under the name of Marcelle Blondinet, and appeared at various second-class theatres in the United States and Canada. Then we lose track of her for some years until 1913, the year before the war, when the famous Oriental dancer, Nur-el-Din, who has made a grand success by the splendor of her dresses in America and Canada, appears at Brussels, scores a triumph and buys a fine mansion in the outskirts of the capital. She produces herself at Paris, Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, Madrid, Milan and Rome, but her home in Brussels, always she returns there, your understand me, hein? La petite Marcelle of The Seven Duponts, Marcelle Blondinet of the cafe chantant, has blossomed out into a star of the first importance."
The Colonel paused and cleared his throat.
"To buy a mansion in Brussels, to run a large and splendid troupe, requires money. It is the men who pay for these things, you would say. Quite right, but listen who were the friends of Madame Nur-el-Din. Bischoffsberg, the German millionaire of Antwerp, von Wurzburg, of Berne... ah ha! you know that gentleman, mon cher?" he turned, chuckling, to the Chief who nodded his acquiescence; "Prince Meddelin of the German Embassy in Paris and administrator of the German Secret Service funds in France, and so on and so on. I will not fatigue you with the list. The direct evidence is coming now.
"When the war broke out in August, 1914, Madame, after finishing her summer season in Brussels, was resting in her Brussels mansion. What becomes of her? She vanishes."
"She told Samuel, the fellow who runs the Palaceum, that she escaped from Brussels!" interposed the Chief.
The Frenchman threw his hands above his head.
"Escaped, escaped? Ah, oui, par exemple, in a German Staff car. As I have told my colleague here," he went on, addressing the Admiral, "she escaped to Metz, the headquarters of the Army Group commanded by the... the... how do you say? the Prince Imperial?"
"The Crown Prince," rectified the Chief.
"Ah, oui,--the Crown Prince. Messieurs, we have absolute testimony that this woman lived for nearly two years either in Metz or Berlin, and further, that at Metz, the Crown Prince was a constant visitor at her house. She was one of the ladies who nearly precipitated a definite rupture between the Crown Prince and his wife. Mon Admiral," he went on, addressing the First Sea Lord again, that this woman should be at large is a direct menace to the security of this country and of mine. It is only this morning that I at length received from Paris the facts which I have just laid before you. It is for you to order your action accordingly!"
The little Frenchman folded his arms pompously and gazed at the ceiling.
"How does she explain her movements prior to her coming to this country" the First Sea Lord asked the Chief.
For an answer the Chief pressed the bell.
"Samuel, who engaged her, is outside. You shall hear her story from him," he said.
Samuel entered, exuding business acumen, prosperity, geniality. He nodded brightly to the Chief and stood expectant.
"Ah, Mr. Samuel," said the Chief, " I wanted to see you about Nur-el-Din. You remember our former conversation on the subject. Where did she say she went to when she escaped to Brussels?"
"First to Ostend," replied the music-hall proprietor, "and then, when the general exodus took place from there, to her mother's country place near Lyons, a village called Sermoise-aux-Roses."
"And what did she say her mother's name was?"
"Madame Blondinet, sir!"
The Frenchman rapped smartly on a little pocketbook which he had produced and now held open in his hand.
"There, is a Madame Blondinet who has a large farm near Sermoise-aux-Roses," he said, "and she has a daughter called Marcelle, who went to America."
"Why then...?" began the First Sea Lord.
"Attendez un instant!"
The Colonel held up a plump hand.
"Unfortunately for Madame Nur-el-Din, this Marcelle Blondinet spent the whole of her childhood, in fact, the whole of her life until she was nineteen years of age, on her mother's farm at a time when this Marcelle Blondinet was touring Europe with The Seven Duponts. The evidence is absolute. Mademoiselle here heard the dancer herself confirm it last night!"
"Thank you, Mr. Samuel," said the Chief, "we shan't require you any more. But I'm afraid your Nur-el-Din will have to break her contract with you."
"She's done that already, sir!" said Samuel ruefully.
The Chief sprang to his feet excitedly.
"Broken it already?" he cried. "What do you mean? Explain yourself! Don't stand there staring at me!"
Mr. Samuel looked startled out of his life.
"There was a bit of a row between her and the stage manager last night about her keeping the stage waiting again," he said; "and after lunch today she rang up to say she would not appear at the Palaceum to-night or any more at all! It's very upsetting for us; and I don't mind telling you, gentlemen, that I've been to my solicitors about it..."
"And why the blazes didn't you come and tell me?" demanded the Chief furiously.
"Well, sir, I thought it was only a bit of pique on her part, and I hoped to be able to talk the lady round. I know what these stars are!"
"You've seen her then?" the Chief snapped out.
"No, I haven't!" Mr. Samuel lamented. "I've been twice to the Nineveh--that's where she's stopping--and each time she was out!"
The Chief dismissed him curtly.
When the door had closed behind him, the Chief said to the First Sea Lord:
"This is where D.O.R.A. steps in, I think, sir!"
"Decidedly!" replied the Admiral. "Will you take the necessary steps"
The Chief nodded and pressed the bell. Matthews appeared.
"Anything from the Nineveh?" he asked.
"The lady has not returned, sir!"
"Anything from Gordon and Duff?"
"No, sir, nothing all day!"
The telephone on the desk whirred. The Chief lifted the receiver.
"Yes. Oh, it's you, Gordon? No, you can say it now: this is a private line."
He listened at the receiver for a couple of minutes. The room was very still.
"All right, come to the office at once!"
The Chief hung up the receiver and turned to the Admiral.
"She's given us the slip for the moment!" he said. "That was Gordon speaking. He and Duff have been shadowing our lady friend out of doors for days. She left the hotel on foot after lunch this afternoon with my two fellows in her wake. There was a bit of a crush on the pavement near Charing Cross and Duff was pushed into the roadway and run over by a motor-'bus. In the confusion Gordon lost the trail. He's wasted all this time trying to pick it up again instead of reporting to me at once."
"Zut!" cried the Frenchman.