CHAPTER IV SABOTAGE Dawson showed no malice towards the Admiral or myself for our treatment of him. I do not think that he felt any; he was too fully occupied in collecting the spoils of victory to trouble his head about what a Scribbler or a Salt Horse might think of him. He gathered to himself every scrap of credit which the affair could be induced to yield, and received--I admit quite deservedly--the most handsome encomiums from his superiors in office. During the two weeks he passed in my city after the capture--weeks occupied in tracing out the threads connecting his wretch of a prisoner with the German agents upon what Dawson called his "little list"--he paid several visits both to my house and my office. His happiness demanded that he should read to me the many letters which poured in from high officials of the C.I.D., from the Chief Commissioner, and on one day--a day of days in the chronicles of Dawson--from the Home Secretary himself. To me it seemed that all these astute potentates knew their Dawson very thoroughly, and lubricated, as it were, with judicious flattery the machinery of his energies. I could not but admire Dawson's truly royal faculty for absorbing butter. The stomachs of most men, really good at their business, would have revolted at the diet which his superiors shovelled into Dawson, but he visibly expanded and blossomed. Yes, Scotland Yard knew its Dawson, and exactly how to stimulate the best that was in him. He never bored me; I enjoyed him too thoroughly. One day in my club I chanced upon the Admiral. "Have you met our friend Dawson lately?" I asked. "Met him?" shouted he, with a roar of laughter. "Met him? He is in my office every day--he almost lives with me; goodness knows when he does his work. He has a pocket full of letters which he has read to me till I know them by heart. If I did not know that he was a first-class man I should set him down as a colossal ass. Yet, I rather wish that the Admiralty would sometimes write to me as the severe but very human Scotland Yard does to Dawson." "Does he ever come to you in disguise?" I asked. "Not that I know of. I see vast numbers of people; some of them may be Dawson in his various incarnations, but he has not given himself away."