"Stockton swears it is. To me it's inconceivable. But he gives chapter and verse of at least one drawing that found its way across the North Sea early in the year. Edenborough admits that he either lost it or had it stolen from him. He seems to have been more careful--whichever way you look at it--during the summer. But this autumn the trouble has begun again. A dockyard sketch-map has flown the German Ocean, come home to roost by some means into which we'd better not inquire, and is pronounced by Stockton a bad imitation of one made for him by Edenborough six weeks ago." "Why a bad imitation, I wonder?" "The original has been in the First Lord's archives ever since; he says the copy must have been made from memory; but he has good reasons why nobody but Edenborough could have made it." "Reasons that are not so good in law, apparently?" "Exactly; as yet there's no case and there has been no accusation. But I very much fear that traps are being set, and I've taken it on myself to put the madman on his guard." "To-night?" "Yes; it was the first chance of getting hold of him, and that only by having the poor little bride to dinner as well. Heavy work, Dollar, drinking their healths and knowing what was in the air! The only comfort was that Edenborough knew as well as I did; it was written on his face, if you had the key, and I hadn't to do much beating about the bush when I got him to myself. He was wonderfully frank, from his point of view. He told me that the air of suspicion was driving him out of his mind; he said he hadn't slept for nights and nights." "Although no accusation has been made?" "Although not an open word has been said to connect him with the bad copy of his own map!" "That's the worst thing you've told me," said Dollar quietly. "He protested his innocence, of course?" "In absolute tears!" "And what was your own impression, Mr. Vinson?" "Extremely mixed. I felt that he was speaking the truth, and yet not the whole truth. He had an air of guilty knowledge, if not of actual guilt." "His physical condition bears you out," observed the doctor with reluctance. "And the poor devil's to be married in four days' time!" "There my pity's on the other side." "But the girl's another friend of yours? May I ask her name?" "Lucy Trevellyn." "Any relation of Admiral Trevellyn?" "Own daughter to the old sea-dog, and if anything the breezier of the two! I couldn't imagine a young girl more like an old salt at heart. She'd go to sea if she could; as she can't, she's a little pillar of the Navy League--and engaged to the First Lord's best young man! Could you conceive a more ingenious irony, or a greater tragedy when the truth comes out? Dollar, it must come out before Thursday, if it's ever coming out at all!" "Is it otherwise a likely match?"