The Lost Naval Papers | Page 2

I accept his word
without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them, and they made me
tremble--for Cary's neck. I pressed him to write this story himself, but
he refused. "No," said he, "I have told you the yarn just as it happened;
write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at handling hard facts
and making scientific deductions from them, but with no eye for the
picturesque details. I give it to you." He rose to go--Cary had been
lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my front doorstep. "If
you insist upon it," added he, smiling, "I don't mind sharing in the
plunder."
* * * * *
It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one
morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established his
headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes, diagrams,
and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the apparent
chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy's Work which he
proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not designed to be an
exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but it would be full of
fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear analysis. Day by day
for more than twenty months he had been collecting details of every
phase of the Navy's operations, here a little and there a little. He had
recently returned from a confidential tour of the shipyards and naval
bases, and had exercised his trained eye upon checking and amplifying

what he had previously learned. While his recollection of this tour was
fresh he was actively writing up his Notes and revising the rough early
draft of his book. More than once it had occurred to him that his
accumulations of Notes were dangerous explosives to store in a private
house. They were becoming so full and so accurate that the enemy
would have paid any sum or have committed any crime to secure
possession of them. Cary is not nervous or imaginative--have I not said
that he springs from a naval stock?--but even he now and then felt
anxious. He would, I believe, have slept peacefully though knowing
that a delicately primed bomb lay beneath his bed, for personal risks
troubled him little, but the thought that hurt to his country might come
from his well-meant labours sometimes rapped against his nerves. A
few days before his patriotic conscience had been stabbed by no less a
personage than Admiral Jellicoe, who, speaking to a group of naval
students which included Cary, had said: "We have concealed nothing
from you, for we trust absolutely to your discretion. Remember what
you have seen, but do not make any notes." Yet here at this moment
was Cary disregarding the orders of a Commander-in-Chief whom he
worshipped. He tried to square his conscience by reflecting that no
more than three people knew of the existence of his Notes or of the
book which he was writing from them, and that each one of those three
was as trustworthy as himself. So he went on collating, comparing,
writing, and the heap upon his table grew bigger under his hands.
The clock had just struck twelve upon that morning when a servant
entered and said, "A gentleman to see you, sir, upon important business.
His name is Mr. Dawson."
Cary jumped up and went to his dining-room, where the visitor was
waiting. The name had meant nothing to him, but the instant his eyes
fell upon Mr. Dawson he remembered that he was the chief Scotland
Yard officer who had come north to teach the local police how to keep
track of the German agents who infested the shipbuilding centres. Cary
had met Dawson more than once, and had assisted him with his
intimate local knowledge. He greeted his visitor with smiling courtesy,
but Dawson did not smile. His first words, indeed, came like shots from
an automatic pistol.

"Mr. Cary," said he, "I want to see your Naval Notes."
Cary was staggered, for the three people whom I have mentioned did
not include Mr. Dawson. "Certainly," said he, "I will show them to you
if you ask officially. But how in the world did you hear anything about
them?"
"I am afraid that a good many people know about them, most
undesirable people too. If you will show them to me--I am asking
officially--I will tell you what I know."
Cary led the way to his study. Dawson glanced round the room, at the
papers heaped upon the table, at the tall windows bare of curtains--Cary,
who loved light and sunshine, hated curtains--and growled. Then he
locked the door, pulled down the thick blue blinds required by the East
Coast lighting orders, and switched on the electric