Colonel Kershaw did not reply for a moment. He was clearly arranging some ideas in his mind. He was frowning, and Box saw that it was a frown of perplexity. At last the colonel spoke.

  ‘There’s something wrong about all this Dorset House business, Box, which is why I was determined to waylay you as soon as possible. You say that Maurice Claygate was a spy. But that cannot have been so: you see, Maurice Claygate was one of my people.’

  Once again, thought Box, the usual certainties were to be thrown into chaos. That was inevitable once Colonel Kershaw appeared on the scene. It made for difficulties. It also made for excitement and a feeling of renewed purpose.

  ‘One of your people? Had he managed to work his way into this Sophie Lénart’s confidence?’

  ‘No, Box, that’s the bewildering part of the whole affair. Young Claygate had been with me for nearly two years. He was an independently wealthy young man, you know – he had ten thousand pounds a year in his own right – and what he did for me, he did out of patriotism. He was a bit of a scapegrace, as you say, and very popular with the ladies, but he was proving to be a very competent operator.’

  ‘I had no idea of this, sir,’ said Box, ‘and I’m quite sure that his family and friends had no idea, either. To be frank, I think everybody regarded him as a kind of amiable wastrel—’

  ‘No doubt they did, Box,’ said Kershaw, ‘and that kind of notoriety was an excellent cover for intelligence activities. He was often in Paris, you know, on pleasure bent, and in the summer he’d disappear to Cannes to enjoy himself at the casino.’

  ‘Just a moment, sir,’ said Box, ‘your mention of Paris has just reminded me of something. During my investigations, I learnt that Maurice Claygate had told a friend that he knew De Bellefort to be a scoundrel, and that some people in Paris had told him that. His friend believed that Maurice had fallen in with a gang of sharpers, but obviously he was mistaken.’

  ‘He was, Box. It was from his own well-cultivated contacts in Paris that Maurice Claygate heard about a certain document that had begun a covert journey from one of the French ministries, and which was on its way to Sophie Lénart here in London—’

  Box thought of the compromising letter that had fallen into the hands of Alain de Bellefort, and hazarded an intelligent guess.

  ‘Had that document once belonged to the French Minister of Marine?’ he asked.

  Colonel Kershaw started as though he had been shot. He looked at Box in disbelief.

  ‘Good God, man,’ he cried, ‘how did you know that? Who told you? Did someone reveal to you the contents of the Alsace List?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Box replied. ‘I don’t know anything about the document that you’re talking about. But my business at Dorset House last Thursday concerned a politically indiscreet letter that would have compromised the wife of the French Minister of Marine, and I wondered whether your document – the Alsace List, I think you called it – came from the same source.’

  Kershaw visibly relaxed. He treated Box to a rueful smile.

  ‘There, I stand corrected. That’s what comes of jumping to conclusions. The document that I am talking about was a list of names compiled by the French Foreign Office, and entrusted for safe-keeping to the Minister of Marine, who lives in a villa out at Neuilly. It was a servant in the employ of the minister, a certain François Leclerc, who contrived to steal the document, and send it on its journey into the hands of the various dealers in such matters operating in London.’

  ‘This François Leclerc, sir: I assume something has been done about him, since his name is known to you?’

  ‘Leclerc has been left in ignorance, and is still in the employ of the Minister of Marine. The French special services think that he might lead them to other informers if he thinks that he has been successful. Incidentally, I shouldn’t be surprised if your indiscreet letter hadn’t come to England via the same route. Who had put it up for sale?’

  ‘A man called Alain de Bellefort, sir. He’s well known to Sir Charles Napier.’

  ‘Ah! Alain de Bellefort!’ said Kershaw. ‘Well, that makes sense. He and his sister are intimates of the Claygate family, which explains his presence at the birthday celebrations. He’s always been regarded as a collector of low-grade intelligence, which he sells for a few hundred pounds, but I’m beginning to think that there’s more to him than that. I’ve already arranged to have him shadowed, now that he’s back in France. Could De Bellefort have found out that Maurice Claygate was one of my people?’

  ‘Perhaps, sir,’ said Box. ‘But he could not have been poor Maurice Claygate’s killer. Mr Claygate was shot dead in a house in Lexington Place, Soho, at midnight on Thursday, or there-abouts. As far as I recall, Mr de Bellefort was still at Dorset House. I believe he was there until after midnight, in conversation with the field marshal and his wife. I don’t see how he could have been involved in Mr Claygate’s death.’

  ‘Hmm….’ Colonel Kershaw lapsed into a gloomy silence for a minute or two, and then sprang up from his chair.

  ‘Hang it all, Box!’ he cried. ‘What was Maurice Claygate doing in Sophie Lénart’s house that night? As far as I know, Claygate never knew Sophie Lénart. Damn it, I know he didn’t! Why did he leave his friends and his birthday guests and go out to that woman’s house?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Box, ‘Maurice Claygate was lured away by means of a note delivered to him by a footman. I saw him open the note, and read it. He smiled, and I got the impression that he was amused. He put the note in his pocket, excused himself, telling his friends that he was due for “a little assignation”, and disappeared into the crowd.’

  ‘I expect you found that note, didn’t you? When you came to examine Claygate’s body. What did the note say?’

  ‘It read: “Come straight away to Lexington Place. If you fail me, I will tell your papa all.” It was signed, “Sophie”.’

  Colonel Kershaw stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray on the table. There was a slight smile on his face, but his eyes sparkled with a kind of controlled excitement.

  ‘There’s a certain smugness about your delivery, Box,’ he said, ‘which tells me that you’re holding something back. I’ll leave you to tell me what it is when you judge the moment to be right. Meanwhile, you’ll agree with me that that message is bogus? Claygate knew a lot about Sophie Lénart, but he’d never met her, of that I am certain. There could have been no romantic attachment between them, as that silly message suggests. And then, of course, if it had been the real message – the one that you saw delivered to him at Dorset House – then he would not have reacted with an amused smile after he’d read it. Come now, Box, what is it that you’re holding back?’

  ‘It’s just this, sir. I found out later that the footman who delivered the note was not a genuine employee of the Claygates. He was, in fact, a well-known petty criminal called Aristotle Stamfordis – Harry the Greek. Before I’d found that out, I believed the note to be genuine. But I agree with you now that it is bogus. Whoever shot poor Maurice Claygate dead in that house in Lexington Place, removed the real note, and substituted the false one.’

  Colonel Kershaw sighed and glanced out of the window. He rummaged through some papers on the table, and drew out a coloured map. He tapped it absent-mindedly with a finger, and then looked at Box.

  ‘I’m allowing myself to be drawn into the minutiae of a criminal conspiracy,’ he said, ‘something that lies firmly in your territory, not mine. I know that you’ll tell me what progress you are making on this business of Claygate’s murder, leaving me to look at matters from a rather different perspective.’

  ‘The larger picture,’ Box murmured.

  ‘Yes, Box, the larger picture. Whenever I look at a case that concerns secret intelligence, I have to look at a whole country, sometimes a whole continent…. But you know all this. You and I have shared some rare old adventures together.’

  Kershaw pointed to the coloured map that he had placed on the table.

  ‘That is a map of a certain area of France,’ he said, ‘tucked up neatly in the north-east of the country, the major part on the west bank of the Rhine, and the rest in the upper Moselle Valley. It is close to the border with Germany, and within a stone’s throw of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Kingdom of Belgium. Switzerland lies to its south. This is a German map, and so the territory is marked as “Elsass-Lothringen”. Do you recognize it, Box?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s the territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Whenever I see that map, I think of poor Monsieur Veidt, who helped us to interpret the fragments of the Hansa Protocol. He told me that his family came originally from Strasburg, but had been driven out by the Prussians in ’71. He said that the people in Alsace never knew what they were supposed to be. According to the accidents of history, they could be French one year, and Germans the next. But he reckoned that he was a Frenchman at heart.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a sad, unsettled area of Europe,’ said Kershaw. ‘It was once part of the Holy Roman Empire, but was annexed by France after the Treaty of Westphalia, which followed the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. It stayed French until 1871, when it was ceded to Prussia. That’s when things became very difficult for people like Monsieur Veidt and his family.’

  ‘Didn’t the Germans drive the French people out of Alsace?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite as simple as that, Box. A good number of Alsatians had strong sympathies with Germany, being of Germanic origin themselves. They hated the French Revolution when it came, and from that time – towards the end of the eighteenth century – there began a constant movement of the population. There were waves of emigration to other European countries and to America.

  ‘Some commentators think that Bismarck didn’t want to annexe any French land, knowing that such a move would result in perpetual unrest in the region – and he was right. But Field Marshal von Moltke insisted, and the annexation took place. Alsace-Lorraine is governed directly from Berlin, and the government there decreed that any Alsatians who wished to do so could emigrate until 1876, when all those remaining would be reclassified as German citizens. Well, one hundred thousand people from Alsace-Lorraine emigrated to France in those years, and in 1876 those remaining – nearly one and a half million people – were forced to accept German nationality.’

  Box looked at the map spread out on Kershaw’s table. Like all maps, its neat coloured patches and curling blue and black lines of roads and rivers linking a series of red dots gave no indication of the bloody and desperate history of the area. Those red dots stood for real places – Strasburg, Metz, Nancy – all inhabited by folk who didn’t know whether they were French or German….

  ‘Very interesting, sir,’ he said, and watched Kershaw try to stifle a smile.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But I’ve not asked you to come here today just to hear a history lesson. I want to tell you about a dangerous conspiracy that is brewing up here’ – he tapped one of the red dots on the map – ‘in the town of Metz. It was always a stubborn place, Box, and during the 1870 war it held out against the might of Prussia until October, when it finally surrendered its garrison of a hundred and seventy-three thousand men. And now, after nearly a quarter of a century of German rule, a group of prominent and influential citizens has planned an insurrection.’

  Colonel Kershaw made a little movement of irritation. He looked angered, and suddenly tired, as though this particular news had proved too much for his considerable patience.

  ‘There are over twenty of these people, Box, all capable of drawing hundreds of innocents into their plot. Some of them are so-called patriots, others are socialists, bent on fomenting some kind of fanciful proletarian revolution. They have perfected a plan for a great armed insurrection throughout the territory, coupled with synchronized acts of sabotage. The French Foreign Office have been aware of this group for over a year, and through their own agents in Alsace had compiled a list of all the members and likely sympathizers, together with a written epitome of their targets. That document has come to be known informally as the Alsace List. It was the intention of the French secret service to warn all these people that their plans were known, and to hint that the Germans, too, had discovered something of their intentions, and were poised to retaliate.’

  ‘Warning them off, so to speak?’

  ‘Yes, warning them off, at the expense of a slight elaboration of the truth. The French were convinced that this tactic would bring the conspiracy to an abrupt end, and I must say that I agree with them. It was that list, Box, and its attendant documents, that fell into the hands of Sophie Lénart, and which has now been seized by a person or persons unknown.’

  ‘What did these people hope to achieve by their armed insurrection?’ asked Box. ‘Surely they couldn’t withstand the might of Prussia—?’

  ‘No, they could not,’ Kershaw interrupted, ‘but they are romantic enough to expect a massive military response from France, anxious to repossess her annexed territories. Germany would be presented with a fait accompli, which she would be bound to accept.’

  ‘And what would happen in fact?’

  ‘France would do nothing. She was a signatory to the Treaty of Frankfurt, which she has always honoured, albeit with ill grace. The insurrectionists would be rounded up by the Germans and executed as traitors – which is what they are, Box, because Alsace-Lorraine is German territory. That is the pragmatic view – the sensible and logical view. There would be massive protests in France, of course, but in a year the whole business would be forgotten. Both France and Germany know that any renewed war between them in the nineties would dwarf the horrors of the Franco-Prussian War.’

  ‘What do you propose to do now, sir?’ asked Box.

  ‘I have a plan, Box, to render these hotheads harmless without any loss of face to France or Germany, but before I can carry it out, I need to find that missing document. Whoever killed Sophie Lénart, and my agent Maurice Claygate, took that document, and will attempt to sell it to the highest bidder. I need hardly point out to you that the most attractive buyer would be the German Government in Berlin. I have people there, as you know, who will keep their ears close to the ground. I have several agents in Alsace. For a little while, mine must be a waiting game. Meanwhile, you in your way, and I in mine, must try to find that document, and the man who has stolen it.’

  Somewhere across the Circus a clock struck eleven. Kershaw moved in his chair, and began to tap with his fingers on the table. He glanced at the coloured map, and then at Box, who sat patiently waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Look here. Box,’ he said at last, ‘I may as well tell you a bit more about this business. I was closeted with Sir Charles Napier last night for over two hours, pouring out my woes to him, and asking his advice. As you know, he and I have had our little differences from time to time, but I’m the first to acknowledge that he’s an outstanding diplomat. I asked him for a diplomatic solution to the crisis of the Alsace plotters – and he provided one, as it were, on the spot.

  ‘If that list falls into the hands of the German Government, those foolish men will be rounded up and executed as traitors. In theory, France herself could neutralize the danger posed by the plot by supplying the Prussian Foreign Ministry secretly with their names. The men would still be executed, and Berlin would send a warm note of thanks to the folk in the Quai d’Orsay.’

  ‘But surely, sir,’ cried Box, ‘the French wouldn’t betray their own people? They’d never survive the scandal!’

  ‘You’re right, of course, Box, and if ever such an action became public, the French Government would probably fall. That, I might say, is the chief reason why the French Government wouldn’t contemplate such a move. Patriotism is a fine thing, but public security must take precedence.’

  ‘Is it any concern of ours, sir, whether the French Government falls?’

  Kershaw laughed, and wagged a finger at Box.

  ‘Caution, Mr Box, caution!’ he said. ‘You’re hot and angry at the thought of those Alsatian idiots going to the gallows while France does nothing. But you see, the Third Republic in France is at present one of the bastions of European stability. Not everybody likes it, but its existence is a fact. If it fell in disgrace, the Bonapartists would seize their chance to re-establish the heirs of Napoleon as rulers of the French. The legitimists – those who still pine for the House of Bourbon (and there are many of them) – would attempt to unsettle the provinces, particularly the Vendée. And the communards have been planning and plotting for years – do you want me to go on?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Now, here is what Sir Charles Napier has suggested. Ever since 1815, Russia has wanted a strong France to counter the ambitions of Prussia and Austria. Russia has always resented the wresting of Alsace and Lorraine from the French, and there has been a secret treaty of alliance between Russia and France since 1891. Napier informed me that the word “secret” in this context means that everybody pretends not to know that it exists. It’s to Russia, therefore, that we intend to turn for help in solving this problem. Once that stolen list is secured, I will convey it personally to a trusted ally of ours, none other than Baron Augustiniak, that high-ranking officer of the Okhrana, who led you and me such a lively dance in Poland.’*

  ‘And what will Baron Augustiniak do?’ asked Box.

  ‘He will convey that list to certain agents of the Imperial Russian Police, who will privately warn the Alsatian conspirators that their names are known, and their fate sealed, unless they abandon their ill-considered plan. The affair, discreetly brokered by us, will remain a confidential matter between Russia and France. Germany need never know about that list. And Russia, because of her secret treaty with France, will never reveal it.’