We pressed closer about Raynor as he took the fan, spread it open, and held it close against a table-lamp. "The third, sixth, and ninth," he counted. "You will notice that those three pieces of ivory are a trifle thicker and not as transparent as the others. Glancing at them casually in an ordinary light, you would never suspect that they had been hollowed out, an exceedingly delicate piece of work. It's a pity to spoil anything so pretty, but----"
He snapped the top of one of the panels, disclosing a neatly folded piece of thin paper.
"If you are all satisfied, I will not go further. I want to deliver this to the French Embassy intact. I expect Montani here to-night; he will no doubt be enormously relieved."
A machine whizzed into the driveway, and Montani came in brushing past the astonished Antoine, who had answered the bell.
"The fan is safe," cried Raynor; "you may complete the identification."
"I've handled this whole affair most stupidly," said Montani after a hurried examination. "I'm satisfied that a German agent in America has picked up the trail of the fan. One or two lines of my own communications failed to work, and after reporting the whole matter to the French Embassy I began searching for a man, the most dangerous of all the German spies, who had been intrusted with the business of recovering Madame Volkoff's fan and passing the contents on to Berlin. This person has been representing himself as a French secret agent; he's enormously plausible. I feared he might attempt what I failed to do. If----"
Alice glanced at me, and I stepped to the wall and punched the button.
"Antoine," I said, "tie the arms of the prisoner in the tool-house and bring him here."
"A man in the tool-house!" Montani, Torrence, and Raynor ejaculated in concert.
"Oh, yes," murmured Alice, "that's the pleasantest chapter of all. Our grenadiers captured a whole invading army that made a night attack--one of the most remarkable engagements of the present war, Mr. Torrence."
"The battle of the Bell-Hops," I suggested. "The prisoner will be here in a moment."
While we waited Montani produced a photograph, instantly recognizable as a likeness of our prisoner.
"My reputation is saved!" he exclaimed excitedly. "That he should have been caught here! It is too much! I shall never forgive myself for not warning you of the danger. But you understand, mesdames, that I was sincerely anxious to recover the fan without letting you know its importance. When I found at Seattle and Chicago that you were travelling under assumed names, I was--pray, pardon me--deeply puzzled, the more so because I had satisfied myself in Tokyo that you were loyal Englishwomen, and I believed you to be innocent of complicity with Madame Volkoff. Why you should have changed your names, I didn't know, but it's not my affair now."