‘I did not quite mean that,’ replied Dawson. ‘Those closing ceremonies are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through to a finish. You are a newspaper man and should be eager for new experiences.’ ‘I will come,’ said Cary, rather reluctantly. ‘But I warn you that my sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not look to have a dog’s chance against you.’ ‘He hasn’t,’ said Dawson with great satisfaction. Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first. But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in the Naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but Hagan seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching through his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers or passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be communicative; he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw with surface rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which would have surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not, however, have surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had been conceived. This second trip, like the first, was declared by Dawson to have been a great success. ‘Did you know me?’ he asked. ‘I was a clean-shaven Naval doctor, about as unlike the Army colonel of the first trip as a pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London to-night by the North-Western. There are three copies of your Notes. One is going by Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the Midland. Hagan has the original masterpiece. I will look after him and leave the two other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard by ’phone and have arranged that all three shall have passports for Holland. The two copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really must have Hagan’s set of Notes for my Museum.’ ‘And what will become of Hagan?’ asked Cary. ‘Come and see,’ said Mr. Dawson.