“‘Consider’?” I said: “that’s putting it mildly.”
We were at the ladder, and what a languid stiffness oppressed me I did not know till I touched its freezing rungs, each one of which seared my sore palms like red-hot iron.
The overdue steamer was just arriving as we set foot on the quay. “And yet, by Jove! why not to-night?” pursued Davies, beginning to stride up the pier at a pace I could not imitate.
“Steady on,” I protested; “and, look here, I disagree altogether. I believe to-day has doubled our chances, but unless we alter our tactics it has doubled our risks. We’ve involved ourselves in too tangled a web. I don’t like this inspection, and I fear that foxy old Böhme who prompted it. The mere fact of their inviting us shows that we stand badly; for it runs in the teeth of Brüning’s warning at Bensersiel, and smells uncommonly like arrest. There’s a rift between Dollmann and the others, but it’s a ticklish matter to drive our wedge in; as to _to-night,_ hopeless; they’re on the watch, and won’t give us a chance. And after all, do we know enough? We don’t know why he fled from England and turned German. It may have been an extraditable crime, but it may not. Supposing he defies us? There’s the girl, you see—she ties our hands, and if he once gets wind of that, and trades on our weakness, the game’s up.”
“We want to detach him from Germany, but he’ll probably go to any lengths rather than abandon his position here. His attempt on you is the measure of his interest in it. Now, is to-day to be wasted?” We were passing through the public gardens, and I dropped on to a seat for a moment’s rest, crackling dead leaves under me. Davies remained standing, and pecked at the gravel with his toe.
“We have got two valuable clues,” I went on; “that rendezvous on the 25th is one, and the name Esens is the other. We may consider them to eternity; I vote we act on them.”
“How?” said Davies. “We’re under a searchlight here; and if we’re caught——”
“Your plan—ugh!—it’s as risky as mine, and more so,” I replied, rising with a jerk, for a spasm of cramp took me. “We must separate,” I added, as we walked on. “We want, at one stroke, to prove to them that we’re harmless, and to get a fresh start. I go back to London.”
