“The Japs don’t want to fight you chaps. Not now. They’re not ready. Even though they know you Americans are not ready. It doesn’t take a naval genius to rate the Great White Fleet as a joke. But they damned well know that their fleet is not ready either and won’t be for many, many years.”

“Then why did Yamamoto come here?”

“I suspect that Yamamoto is playing some sort of double game.” Bell looked at the Englishman. There was a certain puzzlement in his expression that looked absolutely genuine. “How do you mean?”

“Yamamoto is working for someone else.”

“Other than the Black Ocean Society?”

“Precisely.”

“Whom?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. But it’s not for Japan.”

“If you don’t know who he is working for, what makes you think it’s someone other than the Japanese?”

“Because Yamamoto offered to buy information from me.”

“What information?”

“He suspected that I had information concerning the new French dreadnought. Offered a pretty penny for it. Expense was obviously no object.”

“Did you have the information?”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Abbington-Westlake answered opaquely. “The point is, the Japs don’t give a hang about the Frogs, old boy. The French Navy can’t fight in the Pacific. They can barely defend the Bay of Biscay.”

“Then what did he want it for?”

“That is the point. That is what I am telling you. Yamamoto intended to sell it to someone who does care about the French.”

“Who?”

“Who else but the Germans?”

Bell studied the Englishman’s face for a full minute. Then he leaned closer, and said, “Commander, it is now clear to me that behind a façade of amiable bumbling, you are extremely well informed about your fellow spies. In fact, I suspect you know more about them than the ships you’re supposed to be spying on.”

“Welcome to the world of espionage, Mr. Bell,” the Englishman replied cynically. “May I be the first to congratulate you on your very recent arrival.”

“What Germans?” Bell demanded harshly.

“Well, I can’t tell you with any precision, but—”

“You don’t believe for one second that the Germans are paying Yamamoto Kenta to spy for them,” Bell cut in. “Whom do you really suspect?”

Abbington-Westlake shook his head, visibly dismayed. “No one I have heard of—none of the regulars one bumps into . . . It’s as if the Black Knight galloped out of the ether and threw his gauntlet on King Arthur’s Roundtable.”

“A freelance,” mused Bell.

Chapter 28

28

A FREELANCE INDEED, MR. BELL. YOU’VE HIT THE NAIL on the head. But the possibility of a freelance merely raises the larger question.” Abbington-Westlake’s round face brightened with relief that he had so intrigued Bell that the tall detective would let him go. “Whom does the freelance serve?”

“Are freelances commonly used in the spy game?” Bell asked.

“One employs all available resources.”