"Absolutely," she replied. "I have never heard of such a thing. The
card is of excellent quality, and, judging from the fact that the
bridegroom is a military man, the parties must be of fairly good social
circles, in which any departure from the accepted custom in such things
would be regarded as `bad form.'"
"Well," I thought, "it may be important." At the same time I realised
that the card might have lain in contact with a scented handkerchief,
and thus absorbed part of the odour. As against this was the fact that
the scent was not a common one. I decided in my own mind that the
matter might be worth looking into, and, when the old custodian's back
was turned, took the liberty of slipping the card into my pocket.
Soon after, having learnt all I could about Cauvin and his abode, we
left the Villa des Fleurs, and, giving the old woman a handsome tip,
returned to Mentone. The same evening I left for Marseilles, Doris and
her mother remaining behind for a day or two before returning to
England.
Somehow I could not dismiss the subject of the perfume from my mind;
why, I cannot exactly tell, for I could not see precisely the bearing of
the card on the problem I had to solve. Was the perfume verbena or
scented geranium, and had the card any special significance?
Next day, in Marseilles, I entered the shop of one of the leading
perfumers in the Cannebiere, and asked the young lady assistant whether
she could identify the perfume for me.
"Certainly, monsieur," she said without hesitation; "that is geranium."
"Are you quite sure," I asked, "that it is not verbena?"
"Monsieur shall decide for himself," was the ready reply, and the girl
at once fetched samples of both perfumes. A single test was enough to
show that she was correct. And then, recognising the purpose of the
card, though she could not speak English, she practically duplicated
Doris's remark. "Is it not unusual, monsieur, to scent a wedding card?"
That set me thinking furiously. It was quite possible that Doris might
have made a mistake about a point of social etiquette. But here was a
young Frenchwoman corroborating her in quite a dramatic fashion.
"It is unusual; I suppose they are peculiar people," I replied as I
left.
It is one of the penalties of contra-espionage work that one becomes
almost morbidly interested in the seemingly trivial. One of the first
lessons to be learnt is that nothing is so small that it can be safely
neglected. There were, it was obvious, many ways by which the card
might have become accidentally impregnated with the perfume. But my
intuitive suspicions grew ever stronger, and at last I found myself
convinced that there was "something in it."
In one particular, at any rate, the card was of first-rate importance.
Try as we would, we had failed entirely to connect Cauvin with anyone in
England. We were morally certain that he must be receiving messages and
money in some subterranean way, but it was certainly not through the
post, and up to the present we had failed to find, among his big list of
acquaintances and friends, anyone whom we could reasonably suspect of
being in touch with the Hidden Hand across the Straits of Dover. But
there were many possible channels of communication through neutral
countries, and obviously we could not stop them all.
Now, with the aid of the wedding card, it seemed possible, always
assuming the card to be genuine, that I might be able to locate one
person at least in England who was upon extremely friendly terms with
our wealthy suspect. That chance, at any rate, whether the perfume
meant anything or not, I was resolved not to miss.
Treachery was rife everywhere. In Russia, in Italy, in Roumania, in
Greece, and in other countries, men of apparently impeccable reputation
were one after another being unmasked in their true characters of agents
of the enemy, and were paying the penalty of their perfidy. In France
several first-class scandals of this kind had recently absorbed the
attention of the public. That England had hitherto been comparatively
free from any of these _causes celebres_ was due, as I well knew, not to
the absence of culprits, but to the lazy British good nature, which,
coupled with the apathy of men in high places who had always laughed to
scorn the very idea of the German spy in England, refused to look
unpleasant facts in the face unless they became unduly obtrusive. And
the picked men of the Hun spy bureau could be trusted not to make
themselves conspicuous!
The great Hun octopus does not advertise its presence. It puts its
faith in the powerful god Mammon, always sure of finding willing
victims, and his chief disciple, Blackmail. Some day or other I may be
able to tell the story in more detail; it will certainly be of absorbing
interest. At present, however, it must give way to the exigencies of
the war situation. The Germans would be only too glad to learn just how
much we know; the British public would probably explode into a blaze of
indignation if they once fully realised the supine attitude of their
rulers to the ever-present and ever-growing menace of the German spy in
their midst.