“You are rather taking my breath away, Mr. Norgate!”

“I can’t help it, sir,” Norgate said simply.  “I know that what I am telling you must sound like a fairy tale.  I beg you to take it from me as the truth.”

“But,” Mr. Spencer Wyatt remarked, “if you have come into all this information, Mr. Norgate, why didn’t you go to your friend Hebblethwaite?  Why haven’t you communicated with the police and given this German spy of yours into charge?”

“I have been to Hebblethwaite, and I have been to Scotland Yard,” Norgate told him firmly, “and all that I have got for my pains has been a snub.  They won’t believe in German spies.  Mr. Wyatt, you are a man of a little different temperament and calibre from those others.  I tell you that all of them in the Cabinet have their heads thrust deep down into the sand.  They won’t listen to me.  They wouldn’t believe a word of what I am saying to you, but it’s true.”

Mr. Spencer Wyatt leaned back in his chair.  He had folded his arms.  He was looking over the top of his desk across the room.  His eyebrows were knitted, his thoughts had wandered away.  For several moments there was silence.  Then at last he rose to his feet, unlocked the safe which stood by his side, and took out a solid chart dotted in many places with little flags, each one of which bore the name of a ship.  He looked at it attentively.

“That’s the position of every ship we own, at six o’clock this evening,” he pointed out.  “It’s true we are scattered.  We are purposely scattered because of the Review.  On Monday morning I go down to the Admiralty, and I give the word.  Every ship you see represented by those little flags, moves in one direction.”

“In other words,” Norgate remarked, “it is a mobilisation.”

“Exactly!”

Norgate leaned forward in his chair.

“You’re coming to what I want to suggest,” he proceeded.  “Listen.  You can do it, if you like.  Go down to the Admiralty to-night.  Give that order.  Set the wireless going.  Mobilise the fleet to-night.”

Mr. Wyatt looked steadfastly at his companion.  His fingers were restlessly stroking his chin, his eyes seemed to be looking through his visitor.

“But it would be a week too soon,” he muttered.

“Risk it,” Norgate begged.  “You have always the Review to fall back upon.  The mobilisation, to be effective, should be unexpected.  Mobilise to-morrow.  I am telling you the truth, sir, and you’ll know it before many days are passed.  Even if I have got hold of a mare’s nest, you know there’s trouble brewing.  England will be in none the worse position to intervene for peace, if her fleet is ready to strike.”

Mr. Spencer Wyatt rose to his feet.  He seemed somehow an altered man.