He gave me his cigar which, as he had said, was a good one, and, after a preliminary sip of his wine, began to speak.

“I am a plain man, Herr Doktor,” he said, “and I like plain speaking.  That is why I am going to speak quite plainly to you.  When it became apparent to that person whom it is not necessary to name further greatly desired a certain letter to be recovered, I naturally expected that I, who am a past member in affairs of this order, notably, on behalf of the person concerned, would have been entrusted with the mission.  It was I who discovered the author of the theft in an English internment camp; it was I who prevailed upon him to acquiesce in our terms; it was I who finally located the hiding place of the document ... all this, mark you, without setting foot in England.”

My thoughts flew back again to the three slips of paper in their canvas cover, the divided crest, the big, sprawling, upright handwriting.  I should have known that hand.  I had seen it often enough on certain photographs which were accorded the place of honour in the drawing room at Consistorial-Rat von Mayburg’s at Bonn.

“I therefore had the prior claim,” Clubfoot continued, “to be entrusted with the important task of fetching the document and of handing it back to the writer.  But the gentleman was in a hurry; the gentleman always is; he could not wait for that old slowcoach of a Clubfoot to mature his plans for getting into England, securing the document, and getting out again.

“So Bernstorff is called into consultation, the head of an embassy that has made the German secret service the laughing-stock of the world, an ambassador that has his private papers filched by a common sneak-thief in the underground railway and is fool enough to send home the most valuable documents by a jackass of a military attache who lets the whole lot be taken from him by a dunderheaded British customs officer at Falmouth! This was the man who was to replace me!

“Bernstorff is accordingly bidden to despatch one of his trusty servants to England, with all suitable precautions, to do my work.  You are chosen, and I will pay you the compliment of saying that you fulfilled your mission in a manner that is singularly out of keeping with the usual method of procedure of that gentleman’s emissaries.

“But, my dear Doktor ... pray fill your glass.  That cigar is good, is it not?  I thought you would appreciate a good cigar....  As I was saying, you were handicapped from the first.  When you reach the place indicated to you in your instructions, you find only half the document.  The wily thief has sliced it in two so as to make sure of his money before parting with the goods.  They didn’t know, of course, that Clubfoot, the old slowcoach, who is past his work, was aware of this already, and had made his plans accordingly.  But, in the end, they had to send for me.  ‘The good Clubfoot,’ ‘old chap,’ ‘sly old fox,’ and all the rest of it—­would run across to England and secure the other half, while Count Bernstorff’s smart young man from America would wait in Rotterdam until Herr Dr. Grundt arrived and handed him the other portion.