We made a clean sweep of the conspirators. No details were ever given to the public, and the stoppage of the big liner was easily explained away to the passengers. We found out that the small cylinder picked up at Mile End had been intended for the purpose of blowing up a munitions train in an important tunnel outside London, but the conspirators found the approaches too closely guarded and gave up the project. They were all sent to Paris for trial on a charge of stealing herbethite, and were eventually sentenced by court-martial to fifteen years' imprisonment. Madame Gabrielle, I am glad to say, received a handsome reward from the British Government, for our success was entirely due to her. She had followed Norman without food or rest or sleep for nearly three days, and was in the last extremity of fatigue when she gave me her final and all-important message. Pasquet, I am glad to say, justified the impression I had formed of him, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him develop into a respectable member of society, happy in the society of his wife, now fully restored to health, and again enjoying the confidence of his employers. We were able, through him, to account for all the stolen herbethite, and it was a relief to know that none of the terrible compound remained in the hands of our enemies. CHAPTER TWENTY. A MESSAGE FROM THE HERRENGASSE. I have here put into narrative form a number of astonishing facts taken from information read and testimony given at the court-martial subsequently held upon the guilty parties. The facts which I assisted in establishing will, I believe, be found of considerable interest to readers as further revealing the subtle methods of the enemy. For obvious reasons I have been compelled to disguise certain names so as not to bring eternal dishonour upon a great and noble family. "And if I revealed the truth to your dear affectionate husband?" whispered the soft-voiced, well-dressed Italian. "What then--eh, Elena?" "_Madonna mia_! No," cried the dark-haired, handsome young woman, who sat at her tea-table in a great, elegantly furnished salon in one of those old fourteenth-century _palazzi_ close to the port of Sarzana, the Italian naval station on the Adriatic. It was a bright afternoon in the summer of 1916; Sarzana, the old city in Ferrara, to which I had gone with Madame Gabrielle, a lazy, sun-blanched place, with its white houses and green sun-shutters, had of late been electrified into naval activity against those hated Tedeschi, those Austrians which every Italian had been taught to hate at his mother's knee.