“Next day I approached Price on the matter. I said I had involuntarily overheard what Schulz had told him, and as the affair was so huge, asked him to take me into it with him. As a matter of fact I thought then, and think now, that the job was too big for one person to handle. However, Price cut up rough about it: wouldn’t have me as a partner on any terms and accused me of eavesdropping. I told him to go to hell and we parted on bad terms. I found out—I may as well admit by looking through the letters in his cabin while he was on duty—that he had sent the packet to you, and when I had made inquiries about you I was able to guess his motive. You, humanly speaking, were a safe life; you were invalided out of the service. He would send the secret to you to keep for him till after the war or to use as you thought best if he were knocked out. “You will understand, Mr. Cheyne, that though keenly interested in the whole affair, while I was in the service I couldn’t make any move in it. But directly I was demobbed I began to make inquiries. I found you were living at Dartmouth, and it was evident from your way of life that you hadn’t exploited the secret. Then I found out about Price, learned that he was on one of the Bombay-Basrah troopships and that though he had applied to be demobbed there were official delays. The next thing I heard about him was that he had disappeared. You knew that?” Dangle seemed to have been expecting the other to show surprise. “Yes, I knew it. I learned it at the same time that I learned St. John Price was a myth.”