"Colonel von Rausch, I'll just trouble you to hand over to me the tracing you and your friends have stolen from Mr. Henry Seymour--the details of the new battleship about to be built at Chatham."
"What do you mean?" cried the spy. "Drive on, you fool. I have no time to lose."
"I wish for that tracing," I said, whipping out the revolver I always carried. "Give it to me."
"What next!" he laughed, in open defiance. "Who are you, a mere servant, that you should dictate to me?"
"I'm an Englishman!" I replied. "And I'll not allow you to take that secret to your employers in Berlin."
The Colonel glanced round in some confusion. He was evidently averse to a scene in that open street.
"Come into the hotel yonder," he said. "We can discuss the matter there."
"It admits of no discussion," I said firmly. "You will hand me the tracing over which you have so ingeniously deceived me, or I shall call the constable yonder and have you detained while we communicate with the Admiralty."
"Drive on, I tell you," he cried in anger. "Don't be an ass!"
"I am not a fool," I answered. "Give me that tracing."
I turned and whistled to the constable, who had already noticed us in heated discussion.
The officer approached, but von Rausch, finding himself in a corner, quickly produced an envelope containing the tracing and handed it to me, urging:
"Remain silent, Nye. Say nothing. You have promised."
I broke open the envelope, and after satisfying myself he had not deceived me, I placed it safely in my breast-pocket, as further evidence of the work of the Kaiser's spies amongst us.
Then, with excuses to the constable, I swung the car into the yard of the White Horse Hotel, where the spy descended, and with a fierce imprecation in German he hurried out, and I saw him no more.
At midnight I was in Ray's chambers, in Bruton Street, and we rang up Mr. Henry Seymour, who had, we found, returned to his house in Curzon Street from Edgcott only a couple of hours before.
In ignorance that spies had obtained the secret of the _Neptune_ or improved _Dreadnought_, he would not at first believe the story we told him.
But when in his own library half an hour later we handed him back the tracing, he was compelled to admit the existence of German espionage in England, though in the House of Commons only a week before he had scorned the very idea.