“Isn’t it a strange thing,” Cheyne remarked, “that Schulz should have chosen England for his map and English for his cipher. Wouldn’t the natural thing have been for him to have chosen Germany and German? He could have headed it, for instance, ‘Deutschland über Alles,’ and used the initials of German towns for his phrase.” “I thought of that,” French returned, “but we have to remember he prepared the cipher to mislead Germans, not English. In that case I think he was right to use English. It made the thing more difficult.” He had scarcely finished speaking when the door opened, and a tall, alert-looking young man entered the room. French introduced him as Inspector Barnes and pointed to a chair. “Seat yourself, Barnes, and listen to my tale. These gentlemen are concerned with a curious story,” and he gave a brief résumé of the strange events which had led up to the existing situation. “Now,” he went on, “when we found it was connected with the _Silurian_ I rang up Sam Pullar at Lloyd’s, and this is what he told me. The _Silurian_ sailed from this country on the 16th of February, 1917. She was bound for New York, and she had two and a half millions on her in bullion as well as a fair number of passengers. She was a big boat—an Anchor liner of some 15,000 tons. You remember about her?” “Well, I should think so,” Barnes returned, as he lit a cigarette. “Why, I was on that job—getting her away, I mean. All kinds of precautions were taken. A tale was started that she would load up the gold at Plymouth and would sail—I forget the exact date now, but it was three days after she did sail. It was my job to see that the German spies about Plymouth got hold of this tale, and we had evidence that they did get it, and moreover sent it through to Germany, and that the U-boats were instructed accordingly. As a matter of fact the _Silurian_ came from Brest, where she had landed army stores from South America, and the bullion went out in a tender from Folkestone, and was transferred at night in the Channel in the middle of a ring of destroyers. While preparations were being made at Plymouth for her arrival she was away hundreds of miles towards the States.” “But they got her all the same.” “Oh yes, they got her, but not all the same. She escaped the boats that were looking out for her. It was a chance boat that found her, somewhere, if I remember rightly, near the Azores.”