“We shall be very much interested to hear what you can tell us about it,” French prompted. “Will you smoke, Mr. Cheyne?” He held out his cigar case. “I can’t tell you much,” Price returned, “and nothing that will clear up this blessed mystery that seems to have started up. But this is my story for what it’s worth. Before the war I was on one of the Hudson and Spence boats and I had the luck to get into the R.N.R. when hostilities broke out. I stayed on in my old ship till she was torpedoed a couple of years later, then I was appointed third officer on the _Maurania_. We were on a trip from South Africa to Brest with army stores, when one day, just as we came into the English Channel, we were attacked by a U-boat. We had an 18-pounder forward, and by a stroke of luck we gave old Fritz one on the knob that did him in. The boat went down and a dozen of the crew were left swimming. We put out a boat and picked one or two of them up. The skipper was clinging on to a lifebelt, but just as we came up he let go and began to sink. I was in charge of the boat, and some fool notion came over me—I think in the hurry I forgot he was a U-boat skipper—but anyhow like a fool I got overboard and got hold of him. It was nothing like a dramatic rescue—there was no danger to me—and we were back on board inside fifteen minutes.” French and Cheyne were listening intently to this familiar story. So far it was almost word for word that told by Dangle. Apparently, then, there was at least one point on which the latter had told the truth. “We weren’t out of trouble,” Price resumed, “and next day we came up against another submarine. We exchanged a few shots and then a British destroyer came up and drove him off. But I had the luck to stop a splinter of shell, and when we got to Brest I was sent to hospital. The U-boat skipper had got a crack on the head when his boat went down, and he was sent in too. By a chance we got side by side beds in the same ward, and used to talk a bit, though he was a rotter, even for a Boche.” Price paused to draw on his cutty pipe, expelling great clouds of smoke of a peculiarly acrid and penetrating quality. Then, the others not speaking, he went on: