"
He paused and Desmond nodded.
"The extent of our business," the Chief resumed, "is so large,
the issues at stake so vital, that we at the top have to ignore
the non-essentials and stick to the essentials. By the
nonessentials I mean the little potty spies, actuated by sheer
hunger or mere officiousness, the neutral busybody who makes a
tip-and-run dash into England, the starving waiter, miserably
underpaid by some thieving rogue in a neutral country--or the
frank swindler who sends back to the Fatherland and is duly paid
for long reports about British naval movements which he has
concocted without setting foot outside his Bloomsbury lodgings.
"These folk are dealt with somehow and every now and then one of
'em gets shot, just to show that we aren't asleep, don't you
know? But spasmodic reports we can afford to ignore. What we are
death on is anything like a regular news service from this
country to Germany; and to keep up this steady flow of reliable
information is the perpetual striving of the men who run the
German Secret Service.
"These fellows, my dear Okewood, move in darkness. Very often we
have to grope after 'em in darkness, too. They don't get shot, or
hardly ever; they are far too clever for that. Between us and
them it is a never-ending series of move and countermove, check
and counter-check.
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