"The fat would have been in the fire then," exclaimed he. "Suppose he lay low for a day or two, took French leave, and went. I should have been off his track. Shadowing is all very well, but it does not always succeed in a crowded district like the Three Towns. If he had got away without me beside him, the man might have reached Essex and done there what he pleased. Besides, he might have had accomplices unknown to me. No, it was the only possible course to give him leave and follow him up close. Then whatever he did would be under my own eye." Dawson gulped down a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. "Who is this man of yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us? What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Essex at all? He ought to be a Devon man." "He isn't, anyway. I have been making close inquiries. Though he has been with us for sixteen years, he did come originally from somewhere in the East. The man is one of the best I have--never drinks, keeps good time, and works hard. He makes big wages, and carries them virtuously home to his wife. He has money in the savings bank, and holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must have wasted the good toil of years. I can't imagine any one less likely to take German gold than this man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your bonnet, Dawson? To a police officer every one is a probable criminal, but some of us now and then are passably honest. I will bet my commission that Maynard is honest." Dawson sniffed. "The honest men, with the excellent characters and the virtuous wives, are always the most dangerous because least likely to arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard hasn't a second establishment hidden away somewhere in the Three Towns? The upper and middle classes have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working class betters do a bit that way too." "All right. Have it your own way. We will assume for the sake of security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I grant leave?" "Yes," said Dawson, "and do it handsomely. Give him four days and run the sympathetic stunt. Offer him a Service pass by the Great Western. Say how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh. Have him up now, and put me somewhere close so that I can take a good look at the swine when he comes in and when he goes out."