If one believed Dawson's own accounts of his exploits—I can conceive no greater exercise in folly—one would conclude that he never failed, that he always held the strings by which his puppets were constrained to dance, and that he could pluck them from their games and shut them within his black box whenever he grew wearied of their fruitless sport. He trumpets his successes, but he never speaks of his failures—he buries them so deeply that he forgets them himself. He veils his plans, movements, and personal appearance in a fog of mystery. None, not even his closest associates, know what he would be at until a job is completely finished, and finished successfully. Thus when he succeeds, his own small world is deeply impressed—even nauseated—by the compelling spectacle of a Dawson triumphant; when he fails, very few know or hear of the failure. He loves the jealousy of his equals and inferiors even more than the admiration of his superiors. Thoroughly to enjoy life he must be surrounded by both in the amplest measure.

What I now have to tell is the story of a failure—a failure due to his refusal ever to allow his right hand to know what his left hand sought to do. He never told me himself one word concerning this story. I obtained the details partly from Captain Rust, partly from Dawson's Deputy, but chiefly from the lady who filled the star role. Dawson himself foolishly introduced me to her nearly two years later; he did not anticipate that we should become friendly, confidential, that we should discuss him and his little ways over cups of tea, made the sweeter by the clandestine nature of our frequent meetings. He had not allowed for the fascinations of the lady—fascinations so alluring that even I, a middle-aged Father of a Family and Justice of the Peace, was instantly reduced by them to the softest moral pulp; and he had not allowed for the Puckish glee with which I welcomed the tale, rolled it round in my wicked fancy, and bent its ramifications into an orderly narrative.

* * * * *

I very vividly remember my first meeting with the lady. She came one day, a fortnight after I had returned from Cary's flat to my neglected duties, heralded by a short note from Dawson. "I shall be greatly obliged if you will give Madame Gilbert all assistance in your power. She is one of my team." That was all, but my curiosity was piqued. I had heard much of Dawson's team of feminine assistants—rudely called by rivals his "harem"—and I was eager to meet one of them. I ordered Madame Gilbert to be admitted to my presence. She came, I saw, she conquered. When I assert that in two minutes she had plucked me from my chair of dignity, flung me upon the Turkey carpet, and jumped upon me with her daintily shod feet, I do not exaggerate.

She was not very young—I put her at two or three years over thirty. She was, or gave herself out to be, a widow. She was a female detective; I was a modest gentleman of rigid English respectability, not without some matrimonial experience in the ways of Woman. There was nothing in the purpose of her visit to have caused her to come upon me as a Venus, fully armed, and to have forced me to an abject surrender. From the feathers of her black picture hat to the tips of her black velvety shoes she was French-clad, the French of Paris, and wore her clothes like a Frenchwoman. She was dressed—bien habillee, bien gantee, bien coiffee. Her hair was red copper, her skin—the "glad neck" of her dress showed a lot of it—had the colour and bloom, the cream and roses, of Devon. Her eyes were very large and of a deep violet All these charms of dress and face and colour I could have gallantly withstood, but the voice of her settled my business at once. Its rich, full tone, its soft, appealing inflection, the pretty foreign accent with which she then chose to speak English—I can hear them now. I have always been sensitive to beautiful voices, and Madame Gilbert's voice is beyond comparison the most beautiful voice in the wide world.

Madame Gilbert made one or two small requests to which I gave an immediate assent, and then she asked me to do something within my power but much against my uncontrolled will. "Madame," said I shamelessly, "as you are strong be merciful; let me off as lightly as you can." She laughed, and eyed me with interest. My defeat had been with her, of course, a certainty, but perhaps it took place more rapidly than she had expected. "I have not asked for much," said she.

"It is not what you have asked that I fear, but what you may ask before I get you out of my room," said I.

She laughed again and let me down very gently. I did not tell her more than three secrets which I was pledged never to reveal. "That's all," said Madame Gilbert. "Thank Heaven," said I.

On the following afternoon, about four o'clock, Madame Gilbert called again upon me. When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet her, my mien was bold and warlike. She warmly squeezed my hand, and I returned the attention with empressement. For a few minutes we exchanged polite compliments, and then she sprung upon me in her tender confident tones, a request so preposterous that my rapidly flitting courage was stimulated to return. Be brave, I murmured to myself, attack boldly, say "No," and you will be saved for ever.

"I deeply regret, madame," said I coldly, "that it is not possible for me to accede to your wishes." It was done, and I breathed more freely though the sweat broke out on my forehead.

Her eyes opened upon me with the pained surprised look of a deeply disappointed child. "Oh, Mr. Copplestone," she moaned, "and I thought that you were my friend."

I clutched tightly at the arms of my faithful chair and held to my programme of heroic boldness.

"You shouldn't have asked me such a question. You really shouldn't—you know you shouldn't."

Her eyelids flickered, and the violet pools which they uncovered glittered with a moisture which was not of tears, and she laughed, laughed, and continued to laugh with the deepest enjoyment.

"I wanted to see how much you would stand," said she at last.

From that moment her spell over me was broken, and we became friends. I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy and unbeautiful of female axe-grinders.

"Will you permit me to offer you a cup of tea so as to wash from your mouth the unpleasant taste of my brutal refusal?"

"I will," said Madame Gilbert graciously.

We issued from my office and betook ourselves to a pleasant shop where we could drink tea and nibble cakes, and talk without being overheard. Madame Gilbert, I observed, had a healthy appetite.

We talked of ourselves and exchanged delicious confidences. "You have asked me many questions," I said. "May I ask one of you? What are you? You are not English, and you are not, I think, French."

"Shall I also learn a lesson from you in unkindness and say 'No'?" she inquired. "But it would be cruel, for you have really been quite nice to me. I will reveal the secret of my birth." She put up one hand and began to tick off the countries which had been privileged to play a part in her origin and education. "My father was a Swede—one; my mother was an Irishwoman—two. I was born at Cork in Ireland, but remember nothing about it, for my father died when I was three years old, and my Irish mother removed instantly to Paris—three. By the way, I have observed that the Irish and the Scotch always run away from their own countries at the first possible opportunity. Why is this?"

"It is much pleasanter," I remarked sententiously "to sentimentalise over the fringes of the United Kingdom from a safe distance, than to live in them."

"Oh! Let me see, I had got as far as Paris. When I was old enough I went to a convent school there. I speak French rather better than I do the Irish-English which my mother taught me."

"You speak English most charmingly. There is about it now a delicate suggestion, no more, of Ireland. When you first came to me your accent was distinctly foreign, French or Italian. I am afraid that you are a wicked woman, a deceiver, and that the fascinating accent was put on for my subduing. It was a very pretty accent."

"I have found it most effective," said she brazenly.

"When I was eighteen I was married—to an Italian (Guilberti)—four. I should have become a Catholic, my husband's faith, but for my mother's Protestant-Irish prejudices. She was of the Irish Church, my husband of the Roman, so I compromised. I joined the Church of England, the High Branch."

"Your religion is almost as complicated as your nationality."

"Yes, isn't it?" said she. Her hand was still uplifted; she had paused at the fourth finger. "We lived in Italy and in France. Two years ago my husband died, and shortly after the war began my mother died. I had a little money, I was known to the Embassy in Paris as one who could pass indifferently as English, or French, or Italian. I wanted to strike a blow for all my countries, and I was recommended to Mr. Dawson for"—she looked round carefully, bent her head close to mine, and whispered—"the Secret Service. So I came for the first time that I remember to England—five."

"But what are you?" I asked, with knitted brows; "I am not an international lawyer."

"Mr. Dawson says"—I found that she has a childlike confidence in the redoubtable Dawson—"that by birth I am a British subject. My Swedish father doesn't count, as I never adopted Sweden when I came of age. My domicile before marriage was France, but by marriage I became an Italian. It is no matter; I am of the Entente, and I do my bit. It is not a bad bit sometimes."

That was the first of many agreeable tea-drinkings which Madame
Gilbert and I took together.

Madame Gilbert believes herself to be, as she puts it, a woman of "surprising virtue," and I am by no means sure that she is not right. For the doing of her bit has led her into situations from which nothing but the coolest of hearts and the quickest of wits could have brought her out untarnished. She has played her part gallantly, serenely, in the service of the Alliance; I should be a poor creature if I judged her by British provincial standards. Among other stories she told me the tale which I will repeat to the reader. Here and there were gaps which I have sought diligently to fill up until the whole has been made complete. Madame Gilbert told to me the most intimate details without a blush, and if in my telling I startle the blood to the cheek of the very oldest of readers, the fault will rest with me.

* * * * *

"I have a notion, Madame Gilbert, which I should like you to follow up," said Dawson. He was at that time (the Spring of 1915) in his office in London—he had not yet been despatched on his spacious pilgrimage to the northern shipyards—and Madame Gilbert sat opposite to him in an attitude deliberately provocative. She sat back in a comfortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed, and she displayed a great deal more of beautifully rounded calf and perfectly fitting silk stockings than is usual even in the best society. Although she did not look at Dawson, she was fully conscious of the frowning glare which he threw at the audacious leg.

"Please give me your attention—if you can. I have been out at the Front lately, at General Headquarters, to advise upon the means of stopping the flow of information from our lines to the enemy. All the obvious channels have been stopped—the telephones hidden in French cellars, the signals given by the hands of clocks, the German spies dressed in uniforms stripped from our dead, and so on. Lots of them, all obvious and simple. One can deal with that sort of thing by a careful system of unremitting watchfulness. We must have caught up with most of the arrangements made by the Germans before the war, but they still get much more information than is good for them to have, and for us to lose. I am convinced—and G.H.Q. agrees—that there are many officers, especially in the French and Belgian armies, who were planted there years before the war for the precise purpose to which they are now put. Even in our own Army, which is expanding so rapidly, the same thing is possible, even probable. An infantry officer spy can do little—he knows nothing of the Staff plans, and cannot get into communication with the enemy at all readily, without arousing suspicion. I went into the whole thing at the Front, and I put my finger, as I always do, upon the danger spot—the Flying Corps. Those who fly constantly over our own and the enemy's lines have complete information as to distribution and movements, and, if they choose, can drop dummy bombs containing news for the enemy to pick up. A French, Belgian, or English aeroplane 'observer' in the enemy's secret service could convey information to him at pleasure and without the possibility of detection. I don't suspect our own Flying Corps, except on the general principle of suspecting everybody and everything, but I do that of the French and the Belgians. France and Belgium were salted through and through by the Germans in anticipation of war. There in the Flying Corps we have a very grave danger which—But I see that you are not attending, madame," he broke off angrily.

Her eyes withdrew from the offending leg for an instant, and flashed at Dawson with a penetrative power which even he felt.

"Shall I repeat what you have said, word for word?" asked Madame
Gilbert coldly.

"I am not now dealing with facts, but with conjecture;" went on Dawson, after begging her pardon. "I have nothing to go upon, but the Germans have far more of imagination and ingenuity than we always credit to them. They must see that with the great advance in the Flying Corps of the Allied armies, and the opportunities which flying men have for collecting and conveying information, one flying spy would be worth a hundred spies on foot. For them to perceive is to act. I therefore conclude positively that they have agents in the flying squadrons of France and Belgium, and possibly even in our own. So I told the C. in C., and he agreed with me. He was good enough to say that he would never have thought of this had I not suggested it to him. Soldiers are not detectives, madame, and very few detectives are William Dawsons. If the War Office knew its business, every Assistant Provost-Marshal would be, not a soldier, but a man from the Yard, and I should be the P.M. in Chief on the Headquarters Staff. I should wear a general's uniform and hat."

"You would look sweet," said Madame politely.

Dawson, the ex-private of Red Marines, swelled out his chest and felt himself to be a Major-General at the least.

"They will do their best to follow up my idea at the Front, and I shall start a campaign here. For I become more and more convinced that the head centre of the German secret service is here in London. Paris, even before the war, was too watchful, and now is as hot as Hell. London reeked with spies, and though we locked up the worst of them when war broke out, lots still remain. If you only knew how many we laid by the heels and keep shut up without any trial, or nonsense of that sort, you would be surprised. It is only since the Defence of the Realm Act was passed that England has become a free country. We keep a drag-net going continually, we have hundreds of agents in all suspected quarters, but this wilderness of bricks and mortar is too big even for us. Once an enemy agent has got himself into an English or Allied uniform, he is horribly difficult to run down. That is where you, and those like you, come in. Are you sure, my dear madame, that you can pass without detection as a Frenchwoman or a French-Belgian?"

Madame Gilbert put up her left hand, and began to tick off her qualifications. "My father was a Swede, my mother was Irish, I was educated in France from the age of three to eighteen, I married an Italian. Brussels I know almost as well as dear Paris. I can be Parisienne or Bruxelloise—whichever you wish, Mr. Dawson."

"Good," said Dawson. "What I want of you is this. Whenever here in London you see a French or Belgian officer wearing the badges of the Flying Corps, mark him down. Make his acquaintance somehow; you will know how. Entertain him, fascinate him, let him entertain you; fool him as you would fool me if I let you; worm out his secrets, if he has any. If you get upon a promising track, go strong; let the man make love to you—he will, whoever he is, if you give him half a chance—intoxicate him with those confounded eyes of yours. If you can find only one who is in the enemy's service, you will be fully repaid for all your trouble."

"It is a largish contract," murmured Madame thoughtfully.

"There are not so very many flying officers," said Dawson, "and they are all young. You will work through them pretty quickly. Most of them will be the genuine article upon whom you need not waste much time. But the others, those whom I suspect, you must grab hold of and never let go, whatever happens."

"I hope," said Madame primly, "that you do not expect me to do anything—improper."

Dawson stared at her in wonder. Her big eyes, shining with the lovely innocence of childhood, met his without a flicker. "Bless my immortal soul," he muttered, "she is getting at me again." Then aloud, and gravely—"My assistants are always expected to conduct themselves with the strictest propriety."

Madame laughed softly. "I have known many men in my time, Mr. Dawson, but I have never enjoyed any man so much as I do you."

"I appear to have rather a roaming commission," Madame Gilbert went on, after a thoughtful pause. "Can you not give me any guidance?"

"Not at present. I am testing an idea, that is all. You must be guided by your own wit and judgment, in which I have the utmost confidence. Don't waste your time or fascinations on the wrong people. Find out if among the French or Belgian flying officers, who from time to time visit London, there are any whose connections and movements will repay close watching here and at the Front. Sift them out. When you get upon a track which seems promising, follow it up, and do not be—what shall I say?—do not be too squeamish. Money is no object. Behind us is the whole British Treasury, and you can have whatever you want. Will you take on the contract, madame?"

"I will do my best," she replied soberly, "and I will not be—too squeamish. I can look after myself, my friend."

In another room of the great building upon the Thames Embankment sat Deputy Chief Inspector Henri Froissart, a French detective officer who had been "lent" to the English service. Opposite him was sitting a young handsome man in the uniform of a captain in the British Army. Froissart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect of Dawson, his immediate chief. "This English Dawson, with whom it is my misfortune to work, is of all men the most impossible. He is clever, as the Devil, but secretive—my faith! He tells me nothing. He lives in disguise of body and mind. There are twenty men in his face, his figure, and his dress. He comes to me as a police officer, a doctor, a soldier, a priest, even as an old hag who cleans the stairs. He deceives me continually, and laughs, laughs. He is a reproach and an insult. I have it in my mind to score off him; what do you say, mon ami?"

Froissart spoke in French, and the English officer replied in the same language. "With pleasure, in the way of business. I have been placed at your orders, not at old man Dawson's. Go ahead, what is the game?"

Froissart nodded approval. "I think that you can pass as a French officer or a French-speaking Belgian. Is it not so?"

"You should be able to certify that better than I can myself," replied the officer modestly. "As a boy I was brought up at Dinard in Normandy. I served two years in the French Army as a volunteer, a gunner. Then I went to St. Cyr, but England, the home of my father, claimed me, and I was given a commission in the Artillery. That was two years ago. I volunteered for the Flying Corps, served in it at the outbreak of war, but was invalided after that confounded accident which spoilt my nerve. I fell two hundred feet into the sea, and passed thirty hours in the bitter water before a destroyer picked me up. Thirty hours, my friend. My nerve went, and I was besides crippled by rheumatism of the heart. Then I was for a few weeks liaison officer on the Yser at the point where the English and Belgian lines met. The wet, the cold, were too great for me, and again I was invalided. I was a temporary captain without a job until you met me and asked for me to be attached to you for secret service. Yes, M. Froissart, I can pass as a French or a Belgian officer. It needs but the uniform."

"Good," cried Froissart. "You are English of the English, and French of the French. You have served under the Tricolor and under the Union Jack. You are an embodiment of L'Entente Cordiale. You almost reconcile me to that detestable Dawson, but not quite. He is of the provincial English, what you call a Nonconformist—bah! He is clever, but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this service, am aristocrat, a Count of l'ancien regime, catholique, presque royaliste. His blood is that of muddy peasants, yet he is my chief! Peste, I spit upon the sacred name of Dawson!"

"You don't seem to be a very loyal subordinate," observed the officer, smiling.

"Me, not loyal!" cried Froissart astonished. "I surely am of all men most loyal to l'Entente. Have I not proved my loyalty? I have left my beautiful France and come here to this foggy London to aid this flat-footed homme de bout, Dawson, in his researches. Yet he tells me nothing. He disguises himself before me, and laughs, laughs, when I fail to recognize his filthy, obscene countenance. But I am loyal, of a true loyalty unapproachable."

"I believe you, though you have a queer way of showing it. What is now the game that you want to play off on the old man as a proof of your unapproachable loyalty?"

"He is clever, my faith, clever as the Devil. He discerns the German plans before they are made. He has their agents within a wire net which closes whenever he wishes. He has swept London clean of the foul brood which festered here before the war. I have great, limitless confidence in this Dawson whom I detest, but to whom I am of all his assistants the most loyal. He now suspects that contained within the Flying Corps of us, the Belgians, and the English are observers in the pay of Germany. It is an idea most splendid. For if it is true, what greater opportunity could be given to any spies! To fly over our lines, to learn of everything, and then to convey the news to the enemy by way of the air! If he had told me of this most perspicuous of theories, I would have aided him with all the wealth of my genius. But no, he tells to me nothing. He comes and goes, he spins his web like a great fat female spider, but he tells me nothing. It is my belief that he despises me because I am French, aristocrat, and catholique. But I will show him; I will, as you call it, score most bitterly off him; I will do in my way successfully what he vainly seeks to do in his way. Conspuez Dawson!"

"This is quite like the old times of the Dreyfus case," said the
Englishman.

"Dreyfus! But I will speak not of that. It is buried. We French are one people now, one and indivisible. Though of traitors, the villain Dreyfus was of the most horrible. Let us speak of cet homme tres sale, Dawson. I do not know his plans. They will be shrewd, but without imagination, without flair. He will watch, with his eyes of a cat, the French and Belgian flying officers who come to London, but he will not discover their secrets. For he does not understand, this cold English Dawson, that secrets which endanger the neck are told only to women."

"Yet I have heard that he has a team of women—his harem, as it is called. I have never seen one of them."

"Bah! Englishwomen, of the large feet and the so protruding teeth! Who would tell of his precious secrets to them!"

"Oh, come, M. Froissart. We have as many pretty women in London as you have in Paris."

"It is possible, my friend. All things, the most improbable, are possible. But they conceal themselves most assiduously. I have not seen them, these so pretty Englishwomen."

"Well, well. You are a bit out of date as regards our women. But I don't want to argue. What is the game?"

Froissart leaned forward and spoke solemnly, forcibly.

"If the man Dawson is right, and there are German spies in the French and Belgian flying services, they will come to London to get their orders. And they will get them from women, depend upon it, my friend. From women who are of French education, who appear to be French, yet who are the deadly, the most dangerous, enemies of France. Let Dawson watch the men themselves; but watch you such women as I indicate—women who appear to be French and yet are not French. I will speak to the Chief, not to Dawson, but to the Great Chief of us all. You shall be dressed in the tenue of a French flying officer; you shall avoid French or Belgian officers who might ask questions the most embarrassing. You shall make the acquaintance of women who appear to be French, yet who are not French. Grip on to these, my friend, entertain them, make yourself of the most fascinating and agreeable, give to them attentions and love of the warmest. And when after two or three glasses of champagne you repose at ease with your arm about their waists, get you at their secrets. You are young, handsome, and your eye is bold. I give you a pleasant task—the deception of deceiving women. In my younger days what joy would I not have taken in it."

Captain Rust became very gloomy during this speech for, though French in education, he was by instinct an Englishman.

"I don't like the business at all. It sounds mean and grubby, ugh! Not quite what one would ask of a gentleman."

Froissart was genuinely surprised. "What do you say, not for a gentleman? Am I not a gentleman, I, who speak, a Froissart, a Count of l'ancien regime, a Royalist almost? I offer you a task which combines business and pleasure in the most delicious of proportions. And you call my offer mean and grubby, meprisable et crotte! I do not ask you to consort with those of the demi-monde. The women who are of most danger to our countries are not courtisanes; they are of the monde, fashionable. They meet officers in society; they humour and flatter them; they display a melting softness of sympathy and interest. I do not ask you, my friend, to endanger your English virtue."

The tone of wondering contempt with which he ended brought a smile to
Rust's lips.

"I am not so very virtuous, monsieur. But I am English, and I try, vainly perhaps, to be a gentleman. It seems to me a dirty business to make up to women in order to wheedle out their secrets."

"We have to do worse than that in defence of our country. We have to plot and counterplot, to lie and deceive. But we do these things, and you must do them too, if you would be of the Secret Service. Content yourself. Think always that it is for la belle France or for le bel Angleterre, for la grande Alliance. You have qualifications unusual; you are young, handsome, and French in manner and speech. You are a soldier; it is for me to command, and for you to obey. Besides, think you; if success comes to us, picture to yourself the desolation of Dawson!"

"Desolating Dawson is more your fun than mine. I have no grudge to work off on the old man. Since you command, I will obey. I will do my best, but, to be quite frank, I do not like the job."

"But you will do it. I think that you English, slow to move, do best those things which you like least. You despise the Secret Service, what you call dirty spying, yet you do it to admiration—with a courage and sang froid most wonderful. You hate to begin a war, and yet when you fight you are, of all people, the most unwilling to stop. When we French and the Russians yonder have supped of this war to the dregs, you English will just have begun to find your appetites. Stop? you will cry. Make peace? Be content? Why, we have just got our second wind! It will be the same with you, my friend. You begin reluctantly, but when the chase becomes hot, you will be on fire with zest. You will not trouble then that vous vous faites crottes."

"I will do my best; I cannot say more than that."