"But large or small, the thing must be done," broke in the First Lord. "If this news gets out, and we fail to come up with the German Squadron down south, the effect upon the public will be horrible. The English people may even lose their perfect, their sublime, faith in ME." "They may lose their faith in the Navy," muttered Jacquetot. "It is the same thing," said the First Lord. "Can you let me know more details, my lord?" asked Dawson. "What is the programme? I don't see at present how the arrival, docking, and sailing of the battle-cruisers can possibly be kept secret, but there may be a way if one could only think of it." "If the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ arrive according to programme," said Jacquetot, "they will not come up the Sound till after dark. Then in the small hours they will slip into dock, and no one but the regular dockyard hands will know that they are there. We will haul them out also in the middle of the night, and they will be clear away by daybreak, forty-eight hours after arrival. Coal and other stores are on the spot in plenty, and the shells and cordite for the twelve-inch guns can soon be got down from the Plymouth magazines. The secrecy of the operation seems to me to turn on whether we can trust the dockyard hands." Dawson shook his head. "I wouldn't plump on that, my lord. There have been enemy agents working in every dockyard in the kingdom for years past, and we haven't spotted all of them. Still, we have our own men working alongside of them--Scotland Yard men engaged from among the shipbuilding trades unions--accounting for every one, so that no man can be away from his post without our knowing and shadowing him. It is not easy to get any information out of the country nowadays. The secret wireless stories are all humbug. Wireless gives itself away at once. If one wants to get news to the enemy, one has to carry it oneself, or hire some one else to carry it. Most of that which goes we allow to go for our own purposes. I am pretty sure that no dockyard hand could get anything away to Holland without our knowledge, so that it doesn't matter whether they are trustworthy or not so long as we're not fools enough to trust them. You may not know it, but I have my own Yard men among your messengers here in this building, and among your clerks too." "What!" cried the First Lord. "You don't even trust the Admiralty!" "Least of all," said Dawson grimly. "If I was head of the German Secret Service, I would have my own man as your private secretary." The First Lord sat down gasping. Jacquetot nodded kindly to Dawson, and laughed in his grim old way. "You are the man we want," said he.