“It turned out that the wound on Schulz’s head—his name was Schulz—was serious, and he grew steadily worse. Then one night when the ward was quiet, he woke me and said he knew his number was up and that he had a secret to tell me. We listened, but all the other fellows seemed asleep, and then he told me he could put me in the way of a fortune—that he had hoped to get it himself after the war, but now that it would be a job for someone else. He said he would tell me the whole thing, and that I might make what I could out of it, if only I would pledge myself to give one-eighth of what I got to his wife. He gave me the address—somewhere in Breslau. He asked me to swear this and I did, and then he took a packet from under his pillow and handed it to me. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the whole thing’s there. I put it in cipher for safety, but I’ll tell you how to read it.’ Well, he began to do so, but just then a sister came in, and he shut up till she would leave. But the excitement of talking about the thing must have been too much for him. He got a weak turn and never spoke again.” “But,” Cheyne interposed, “what about the hard copper? Dangle told us about Schulz’s discovery.” Price gazed at him vacantly for some moments and then suddenly smote the table. “I’ve got it!” he cried with an oath. “Dangle! I remember that chap now! He was in the next bed on the other side of Schulz. That’s right! I couldn’t call him to mind when you mentioned him before. Of course! He heard the whole tale, and that’s what started him on this do.” “I know,” Cheyne returned. “He admitted that all right. But he told us about the hard copper. You haven’t mentioned that.” Price shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he declared. “What do you mean by hard copper?” “Dangle mentioned it. He was listening to the conversation. He told us all that about Schulz’s story of the fortune, and about his wife and all that, just as you have, but he said Schulz went on to explain what the fortune was: that he had hit on a way of treating copper that made it as hard as steel. The cipher contained the formula.” Again Price shook his head. “All spoof,” he observed. “Not a word of truth in it. Schulz never mentioned copper or said anything more than I’ve told you.” French spoke for the first time. “We found this Dangle a man of imagination, all through, and it is easy to see why he invented that particular yarn. By that time he had undoubtedly read the cipher, and he wanted something to mislead Mr. Cheyne as to its contents. The story of the hard copper would start a bias in Mr. Cheyne’s mind which would tend to keep him off the real scent.” He paused, but his companions not speaking, continued: “Now we have that bias cleared away, at least one interesting fact emerges. The whole business starts with the sea—the U-boat commander, Schulz, and it looks as if it was going to end up with the sea, the tramp, the _L’Escaut_.”