The Lost Naval Papers | Page 6

then asked innocent questions of the
ship's deckhands. He had evidently himself once served as a sailor. One
deckhand, an idle fellow to whom Hagan was very civil, told his
questioner quite a lot of interesting details about the Navy ships, great
and small, which could be seen upon the building slips. All these
details tallied strangely with those recorded in Cary's Notes. The trip up
and down the river was a great success for Hagan and for Dawson, but
for Cary it was rather a bore. He felt somehow out of the picture. In the
evening Dawson called at Cary's office and broke in upon him. "We
had a splendid trip to-day," said he. "It exceeded my utmost hopes.
Hagan thinks no end of your Notes, but he is not taking any risks. He
leaves in the morning for Glasgow to do the Clyde and to check some
more of your stuff. Would you like to come?" Cary remarked that he
was rather busy, and that these river excursions, though doubtless great
fun for Dawson, were rather poor sport for himself. Dawson laughed
joyously--he was a cheerful soul when he had a spy upon his string.
"Come along," said he. "See the thing through. I should like you to be
in at the death." Cary observed that he had no stomach for cold, damp
dawns and firing parties.
"I did not quite mean that," replied Dawson. "Those closing ceremonies
are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through to a finish.
You are a newspaper man, and should be eager for new experiences."
"I will come," said Cary, rather reluctantly. "But I warn you that my
sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not
look to have a dog's chance against you."
"He hasn't," said Dawson, with great satisfaction.

Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near
his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first.
But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again
appeared as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep
interest in the naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real
importance can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but
Hagan seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching
through his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers
or passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be
communicative; he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw
with surface rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which
would have surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not,
however, have surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had
been conceived. This second trip, like the first, was declared by
Dawson to have been a great success. "Did you know me?" he asked. "I
was a clean-shaven naval doctor, about as unlike the army colonel of
the first trip as a pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London
to-night by the North-Western. There are two copies of your Notes.
One is going by Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the
Midland. Hagan has the original masterpiece. I will look after him and
leave the two other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard
by 'phone, and have arranged that all three shall have passports for
Holland. The two copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really
must have Hagan's set of Notes for my Museum."
"And what will become of Hagan?" asked Cary.
"Come and see," said Mr. Dawson.
Dawson entertained Cary at dinner in a private room at the Station
Hotel, waited upon by one of his own confidential men. "Nobody ever
sees me," he observed, with much satisfaction, "though I am
everywhere." (I suspect that Dawson is not without his little vanities.)
"Except in my office and with people whom I know well, I am always
some one else. The first time I came to your house I wore a beard, and
the second time looked like a gas inspector. You saw only the real
Dawson. When one has got the passion for the chase in one's blood,

one cannot bide for long in a stuffy office. As I have a jewel of an
assistant, I can always escape and follow up my own victims. This man
Hagan is a black heartless devil. Don't waste your sympathy on him,
Mr. Cary. He took money from us quite lately to betray the silly asses
of Sinn Feiners, and now, thinking us hoodwinked, is after more money
from the Kaiser. He is of the type that would sell his own mother and
buy a mistress with the money. He's not worth your pity. We use him