“Oh, how could you know that, Mr. Cleek?  Nobody ever suspected.  The baron never confessed to any living soul until he did so to me, to-day—­and then only because he had to tell somebody, in order that the appointment with you might be kept.  How, then, could you guess?”

“By putting two and two together, Miss Lorne, and discovering that they do not make five.  The inference is very clear:  Baron de Carjorac is President of the Board of National Defences; Germany, in spite of its public assurances to the contrary, is known by those who are ’on the inside’ to harbour a very determined intention of making a secret attack, an unwarned invasion, upon England.  France is the key to the situation.  If, without the warning that must come through the delay of picking a quarrel and entering into an open war with the Republic, the German army can swoop down in the night, cross the frontier, and gain immediate possession of the ports of France, in five hours’ time it can be across the English Channel, and its hordes pouring down upon a sleeping people.  To carry out this programme, the first step would, of course, be to secure knowledge of the number, location, manner of the secret defences of France—­the plans of fortification, the maps of the ‘danger zone,’ the documentary evidence of her strongest and weakest points—­and who so likely to be the guardian of these as the Baron de Carjorac?  That is how I know that ‘The Red Crawl’ was after something of vital importance to German interests, Miss Lorne.  That he got it, I know from the fact that the baron, while hinting at disgrace and speaking of peril to his own life, dared not confide in the French authorities and ask the assistance of the French police.  Moreover, if ‘The Red Crawl’ had failed to secure anything, the baron, with his congenital loathing of all crawling things, would have left the Chateau Larouge immediately.”

“Oh, to think that you guessed it so easily—­and it was all such a puzzle to me.  I could not think, Mr. Cleek, why he did remain—­why he would not be persuaded to go, although every night was adding to the horror of the thing and it seemed clear to me that he was going mad.  Of course, Madame la Comtesse and her brother tried to reason him out of what he declared, tried to make him believe that it was all fancy—­that he did not really see the fearful thing; it was equally in vain that I myself tried to persuade him to leave the place before his reason became unsettled.  Last night”—­she paused, shuddered, put both hands over her face, and drew in a deep breath—­“last night, I, too, saw ’The Red Crawl,’ Mr. Cleek—­I, too!”

“You, Miss Lorne?”