Treachery was rife everywhere. In Russia, in Italy, in Roumania, in Greece, and in other countries, men of apparently impeccable reputation were one after another being unmasked in their true characters of agents of the enemy, and were paying the penalty of their perfidy. In France several first-class scandals of this kind had recently absorbed the attention of the public. That England had hitherto been comparatively free from any of these _causes celebres_ was due, as I well knew, not to the absence of culprits, but to the lazy British good nature, which, coupled with the apathy of men in high places who had always laughed to scorn the very idea of the German spy in England, refused to look unpleasant facts in the face unless they became unduly obtrusive. And the picked men of the Hun spy bureau could be trusted not to make themselves conspicuous! The great Hun octopus does not advertise its presence. It puts its faith in the powerful god Mammon, always sure of finding willing victims, and his chief disciple, Blackmail. Some day or other I may be able to tell the story in more detail; it will certainly be of absorbing interest. At present, however, it must give way to the exigencies of the war situation. The Germans would be only too glad to learn just how much we know; the British public would probably explode into a blaze of indignation if they once fully realised the supine attitude of their rulers to the ever-present and ever-growing menace of the German spy in their midst. CHAPTER SIX. IN THE "PERSONAL" COLUMN. I had a good deal to do before I could leave for England. From Marseilles I left for St Etienne and Chartres, in both of which towns Jules Cauvin had been known in pre-war days. But little additional information which was of value could I pick up, though I was specially struck by the fact that all who knew him laughed at the bare idea of his having blossomed out into a motor expert. They all seemed equally convinced on this point. One man even ventured the suggestion that, if Cauvin was indeed making huge sums of money from a motor invention, he must have stolen the idea from someone else. "And, believe me, monsieur," ejaculated the voluble Frenchman, "he would not be above doing so. Jules Cauvin an inventor! Phew! he is too lazy; he never did any work if he could help it." However, as I was tolerably sure in my own mind that Cauvin was being handsomely paid for services of quite another kind, this did not help me much. At length, after a journey of a week, during which time I spent only one night in bed, I found myself late one afternoon back in Paris, chatting with my colleagues, Madame Gabrielle Soyez and Henri Aubert, in the former's cosy little flat _au troisieme_, in the Boulevard Pereire. To both I gave certain very definite instructions. To the elegant little Frenchwoman I added: