Dominey gave some orders to the servant who answered his summons.  For a few moments they spoke trivialities of the journey.  When everything was served, however, and the door closed, Seaman could wait no longer.  His appetite, his thirst, his speech, seemed all stimulated to swift action.

“We are of the same temperament,” he said.  “That I know.  We will speak first of what is more than disturbing—­a little terrifying.  The mystery of Johann Wolff has been solved.”

“The man who came to us with messages from Schmidt in South Africa?” Dominey asked.  “I had almost forgotten about him.”

“The same.  What was at the back of his visit to us that night I cannot even now imagine.  Neither is it clear why he held aloof from me, who am his superior in practically the same service.  There we are, from the commencement, confronted with a very singular happening, but scarcely so singular as the denouement.  Wolff vanished from your house that night into an English fortress.”

“It seems incredible,” Dominey declared bluntly.

“It is nevertheless true,” Seaman insisted.  “No member of our service is allowed to remain more than one month without communicating his existence and whereabouts to headquarters.  No word has been received from Wolff since that night in January.  On the other hand, indirect information has reached us that he is in durance over here.”

“But such a thing is against the law, unheard of,” Dominey protested.  “No country can keep the citizen of another country in prison without formulating a definite charge or bringing him up for trial.”

Seaman smiled grimly.

“That’s all very well in any ordinary case,” he said.  “Wolff has been a marked man for years, though.  Wilhelmstrasse would soon make fuss enough, if it were of any use, but it would not be.  There are one or two Englishmen in German prisons at the present moment, concerning whose welfare the English Foreign Office has not even thought it worth while to enquire.  What troubles me more than the actual fact of Wolff’s disappearance is the mystery of his visit to you and his apprehension practically on the spot.”

“They must have tracked him down there,” Dominey remarked.

“Yes, but they couldn’t thrust a pair of tongs into your butler’s sitting-room, extract Johann Wolff, and set him down inside Norwich Castle or whatever prison he may be in,” Seaman objected.  “However, the most disquieting feature about Wolff is that it introduces something we don’t understand.  For the rest, we have many men as good, and better, and the time for their utility is past.  You are our great hope now, Dominey.”

“It is to be, then?”

Seaman took a long and ecstatic draught of his hock and seltzer.

“It is to be,” he declared solemnly.  “There was never any doubt about it.  If Russia ceases to mobilise to-morrow, if every statesman in Servia crawls to Vienna with a rope around his neck, the result would still be the same.  The word has gone out.  The whole of Germany is like a vast military camp.  It comes exactly twelve months before the final day fixed by our great authorities, but the opportunity is too great, too wonderful for hesitation.  By the end of August we shall be in Paris.”