The Kingdom of the Blind
by E. Phillips Oppenheim
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

CHAPTER I

Lady Anselman stood in the centre of the lounge at the Ritz Hotel and with a
delicately-poised forefinger counted her guests. There was the great French
actress who had every charm but youth, chatting vivaciously with a tall,
pale-faced man whose French seemed to be as perfect as his attitude was
correct. The popular wife of a great actor was discussing her husband's
latest play with a Cabinet Minister who had the air of a school-boy present at
an illicit feast. A very beautiful young woman, tall and fair, with grey-blue
eyes and a wealth of golden, almost yellow hair, was talking to a famous
musician. A little further in the background, a young man in the uniform of a
naval lieutenant was exchanging what seemed to be rather impressive chaff with
a petite but exceedingly good-looking girl. Lady Anselman counted them twice,
glanced at the clock and frowned.

"I can't remember whom we are waiting for!" she exclaimed a little helplessly
to the remaining guest, a somewhat tired-looking publisher who stood by her
side. "I am one short. I dare say it will come to me in a minute. You know
every one, I suppose, Mr. Daniell?"

The publisher shook his head.

"I have met Lord Romsey and also Madame Selarne," he observed. "For the rest,
I was just thinking what a stranger I felt."

"The man who talks French so well," Lady Anselman told him, dropping her voice
a little, "is Surgeon-Major Thomson. He is inspector of hospitals at the
front, or something of the sort. The tall, fair girl--isn't she pretty!--is
Geraldine Conyers, daughter of Admiral Sir Seymour Conyers. That's her
brother, the sailor over there, talking to Olive Moreton; their engagement was
announced last week. Lady Patrick of course you know, and Signor Scobel, and
Adelaide Cunningham--you do know her, don't you, Mr. Daniell? She is my
dearest friend. How many do you make that?"

The publisher counted them carefully.

"Eleven including ourselves," he announced.

"And we should be twelve," Lady Anselman sighed. "Of course!" she added, her
face suddenly brightening. "What an idiot I am! It's Ronnie we are waiting
for. One can't be cross with him, poor fellow. He can only just get about."

The fair girl, who had overheard, leaned across. The shade of newly awakened
interest in her face, and the curve of her lips as she spoke, added to her
charm. A gleam of sunlight flashed upon the yellow-gold of her plainly coiled
hair.

"Is it your nephew, Captain Ronald Granet, who is coming?" she asked a little
eagerly.

Lady Anselman nodded.

"He only came home last Tuesday with dispatches from the front," she said.
"This is his first day out."
"Ah! but he is wounded, perhaps?" Madame Selarne inquired solicitously.

"In the left arm and the right leg," Lady Anselman assented. "I believe that
he has seen some terrible fighting, and we are very proud of his D. S. O. The
only trouble is that he is like all the others--he will tell us nothing.

"He shows excellent judgment," Lord Romsey observed.

Lady Anselman glanced at her august guest a little querulously.

"That is the principle you go on, nowadays, isn't it?" she remarked. "I am
not sure that you are wise. When one is told nothing, one fears the worst,
and when time after time the news of these small disasters reaches us
piecemeal, about three weeks late, we never get rid of our forebodings, even
when you tell us about victories. . . . Ah! Here he comes at last," she
added, holding out both her hands to the young man who was making his somewhat
difficult way towards them. "Ronnie, you are a few minutes late but we're not
in the least cross with you. Do you know that you are looking better already?
Come and tell me whom you don't know of my guests and I'll introduce you."

The young man, leaning upon his stick, greeted his aunt and murmured a word of
apology. He was very fair, and with a slight, reddish moustache and the
remains of freckles upon his face. His grey eyes were a little sunken, and
there were lines about his mouth which one might have guessed had been brought
out recently by pain or suffering of some sort. His left arm reclined
uselessly in a black silk sling. He glanced around the little assembly.

"First of all," he said, bowing to the French actress and raising her fingers
to his lips, "there is no one who does not know Madame Selarne. Lady Patrick,
we have met before, haven't we? I am going to see your husband in his new
play the first night I am allowed out. Mr. Daniell I have met, and Lord
Romsey may perhaps do me the honour of remembering me," he added, shaking
hands with the Cabinet Minister.

He turned to face Geraldine Conyers, who had been watching him with interest.
Lady Anselman at once introduced them.

"I know that you haven't met Miss Conyers because she has been asking about
you. This is my nephew Ronnie, Geraldine. I hope that you will be friends."

The girl murmured something inaudible as she shook hands. The young soldier
looked at her for a moment. His manner became almost serious.

"I hope so, too," he said quietly.

"Olive, come and make friends with my nephew if you can spare a moment from
your young man," Lady Anselman  continued. "Captain Granet--Miss Olive
Moreton. And this is Geraldine's brother--Lieutenant Conyers."

The two men shook hands pleasantly. Lady Anselman  glanced at the clock and
turned briskly towards the corridor.

"And now, I think," she announced, "luncheon."

As she moved forward, she was suddenly conscious of the man who ad been
talking to Madame Selarne. He had drawn a little on one side and he was
watching the young soldier with a curious intentness. She turned back to her
nephew and touched him on the arm.

"Ronnie," she said, "I don't know whether you have met Surgeon-Major Thomson
in France? Major Thomson, this is my nephew, Captain Granet."

Granet turned at once and offered his hand to the other man. Only Geraldine
Conyers, who was a young woman given to noticing things, and who had also
reasons of her own for being interested, observed the rather peculiar scrutiny
with which each regarded the other. Something which might almost have been a
challenge seemed to pass from one to the other.

"I may not have met you personally," Granet admitted, "but if you are the
Surgeon-Major Thomson who has been doing such great things with the Field
Hospitals at the front, then like nearly every poor crock out there I owe you
a peculiar debt of gratitude. You are the man I mean, aren't you?" the young
soldier concluded cordially.

Major Thomson bowed, and a moment later they all made their way along the
corridor, across the restaurant, searched for their names on the cards and
took their places at the table which had been reserved for them. Lady
Anselman glanced around with the scrutinising air of the professional hostess,
to see that her guests were properly seated before she devoted herself to the
Cabinet Minister. She had a word or two to say to nearly every one of them.

"I have put you next Miss Conyers, Ronnie," she remarked, "because we give all
the good things to our men when they come home from the war. And I have put
you next Olive, Ralph," she went on, turning to the sailor, "because I hear
you are expecting to get your ship to-day or to-morrow, so you, too, have to
be spoiled a little. As a general rule I don't approve of putting engaged
people together, it concentrates conversation so. And, Lord Romsey," she
added, turning to her neighbour, "please don't imagine for a moment that I am
going to break my promise. We are going to talk about everything in the world
except the war. I know quite well that if Ronnie has had any particularly
thrilling experiences, he won't tell us about them, and I also know that your
brain is packed full of secrets which nothing in the world would induce you to
divulge. We are going to try and persuade Madame to tell us about her new
play," she concluded, smiling at the French actress, "and there are so many of
my friends on the French stage whom I must hear about."

Lord Romsey commenced his luncheon with an air of relief. He was a man of
little more than middle-age, powerfully built, inclined to be sombre, with
features of a legal type, heavily jawed. "Always tactful, dear hostess," he
murmured. "As a matter of fact, nothing but the circumstance that it was your
invitation and that Madame Selarne was to be present, brought me here to-day.
It is so hard to avoid speaking of the great things, and for a man in my
position," he added, dropping his voice a little, "so difficult to say
anything worth listening to about them, without at any rate the semblance of
indiscretion."

"We all appreciate that," Lady Anselman assured him sympathetically. "Madame
Selarne has promised to give us an outline of the new play which she is
producing in Manchester."

"If that would interest you all," Madame Selarne assented, " it commences-so!"

For a time they nearly all listened in absorbed silence. Her gestures, the
tricks of her voice, the uplifting of her eyebrows and shoulders-all helped to
give life and colour to the little sketch she expounded. Only those at the
remote end of the table ventured upon an independent conversation. Mrs.
Cunningham, the woman whom her hostess had referred to as being her particular
friend, and one who shared her passion for entertaining, chatted fitfully to
her neighbour, Major Thomson. It was not until luncheon was more than
half-way through that she realised the one-sidedness of their conversation.
She studied him for a moment curiously. There was something very still and
expressionless in his face, even though the sunshine from the broad high
windows which overlooked the Park, was shining full upon him.

"Tell me about yourself!" she insisted suddenly. "I have been talking rubbish
quite long enough. You have been out, haven't you?"

He assented gravely.

"I went with the first division. At that time I was in charge of a field
hospital."

"And now?"

"I am Chief Inspector of Field Hospitals," he replied.

"You are home on leave?"

"Not exactly," he told her, a shade of stiffness in his manner. "I have to
come over very often on details connected with the administration of my work."

"I should have known quite well that you were a surgeon," she observed.

"You are a physiognomist, then?"

"More or less," she admitted. "You see, I love people. I love having people
around me. My friends find me a perfect nuisance, for I am always wanting to
give parties. You have the still, cold face of a surgeon--and the hands,
too," she added, glancing at them.

"You are very observant," he remarked laconically.

"I am also curious," she laughed, "as you are about to discover. Tell me why
you are so interested in Ronnie Granet? You hadn't met him before, had you?"

Almost for the first time he turned and looked directly at his neighbour. She
was a woman whose fair hair was turning grey, well-dressed, sprightly,
agreeable. She had a humorous mouth and an understanding face.

"Captain Granet was a stranger to me," he assented. "One is naturally
interested in soldiers, however."

"You must have met thousands like him," she remarked,--"good-looking, very
British, keen sportsman, lots of pluck, just a little careless, hating to talk
about himself and serious things. I have known him since he was a boy."

Major Thomson continued to be gravely interested.

"Granet!" he said to himself thoughtfully, "Do I know any of his people, I
wonder?"

"You know some of his connections, of course," Mrs. Cunningham replied
briskly. "Sir Alfred Anselman, for instance, his uncle."

"His father and mother?"

"They are both dead. There is a large family place in Warwickshire, and a
chateau, just now, I am afraid, in the hands of the Germans. It was somewhere
quite close to the frontier. Lady Granet was an Alsatian. He was to have
gone out with the polo team, you know, to America, but broke a rib just as
they were making the selection. He played cricket for Middlesex once or
twice, too and he was Captain of Oxford the year that they did so well."

"An Admirable Crichton," Major Thomson murmured.

"In sport, at any rate," his neighbour assented. "He has always been one of
the most popular young men about town, but of course the women will spoil him
now."

"Is it my fancy," he asked, "or was he not reported a prisoner?"

"He was missing twice, once for over a week," Mrs. Cunningham replied. "There
are all sorts of stories as to how he got back to the lines. A perfect young
dare-devil, I should think. I must talk to Mr. Daniell for a few minutes or
he will never publish my reminiscences."

She leaned towards her neighbour on the other side and Major Thomson was able
to resume the role of attentive observer, a role which seemed somehow his by
destiny. He listened without apparent interest to the conversation between
Geraldine Conyers and the young man whom they had been discussing.

"I think," Geraldine complained, "that you are rather overdoing your
diplomatic reticence, Captain Granet. You haven't told me a single thing.
Why, some of the Tommies I have been to see in the hospitals have been far
more interesting than you."

He smiled.

"I can assure you," he protested, "it isn't my fault. You can't imagine how
fed up one gets with things out there, and the newspapers can tell you ever so
much more than we can. One soldier only sees a little bit of his own corner
of the fight, you know."

"But can't you tell me some of your own personal experiences?" she persisted.
"They are so much more interesting than what one reads in print."

"I never had any," he assured her. "Fearfully slow time we had for months."

"Of course, I don't believe a word you say," she declared, laughing.

"You're not taking me for a war correspondent, by any chance, are you?" he
asked.

She shook her head.

"Your language isn't sufficiently picturesque! Tell me, when are you going
back?"

"As soon as I can pass the doctors-in a few days, I hope."

"You hope?" she repeated. "Do you really mean that, or do you say it because
it is the proper thing to say?"

He appeared for the moment to somewhat resent her question.

"The fact that I hope to get back," he remarked coldly, "has nothing whatever
to do with my liking my job when I get there. As a matter of fact, I hate it.
At the same time, you can surely understand that there isn't any other place
for a man of my age and profession."

"Of course not," she agreed softly. "I really am sorry that I bothered you.
There is one thing I should like to know, though and that is how you managed
to escape?"

He shook his head but his amiability seemed to have wholly returned. His eyes
twinkled as he looked at her.

"There we're up against a solid wall of impossibility," he replied. "You see,
some of our other chaps may try the dodge. I gave them the tip and I don't
want to spoil their chances. By-the-bye, do you know the man two places down
on your left?" he added dropping his voice a little. "Looks almost like a
waxwork figure, doesn't he?"

"You mean Major Thomson? Yes, I know him," she assented, after a moment's
hesitation. "He is very quiet to-day, but he is really most interesting."

Their hostess rose and beamed on them all from her end of the table.

"We have decided," she announced, "to take our coffee out in the lounge."

CHAPTER II

The little party trooped out of the restaurant and made their way to a corner
of the lounge, where tables had already been prepared with coffee and
liqueurs. Geraldine Conyers and Captain Granet, who had lingered behind,
found a table to themselves. Lady Anselman laid her fingers upon Major
Thomson's arm.

"Please talk for a few more minutes to Selarne," she begged. "Your French is
such a relief to her."

He obeyed immediately, although his eyes strayed more than once towards the
table at which Captain Granet and his companion were seated. Madame Selarne
was in a gossipy mood and they found many mutual acquaintances.

"To speak a foreign language as you do," she told him, "is wonderful. Is it
in French alone, monsieur, that you excel, or are you, perhaps, a great
linguist?"

"I can scarcely call myself that," he replied, "but I do speak several other
languages. In my younger days I travelled a good deal."

"German, perhaps, too?" she inquired with a little grimace.

"I was at a hospital in Berlin," he confessed.

Lady Anselman's party was suddenly increased by the advent of some
acquaintances from an adjoining table, all of whom desired to be presented to
Madame Selarne. Major Thomson, set at liberty, made his way at once towards
the small table at which Captain Granet and Geraldine Conyers were seated.
She welcomed him with a smile.

"Are you coming to have coffee with us?" she asked?

"If I may," he answered. "I shall have to be off in a few minutes."

A waiter paused before their table and offered a salver on which were several
cups of coffee and liqueur glasses. Captain Granet leaned forward in his
place and stretched out his hand to serve his companion. Before he could take
the cup, however, the whole tray had slipped from the waiter's fingers, caught
the corner of the table, and fallen with its contents on to the carpet. The
waiter himself--a small, undersized person with black, startled eyes set at
that moment in a fixed and unnatural stare-made one desperate effort to save
himself and then fell backwards. Every one turned around, attracted by the
noise of the falling cups and the sharp, half-stifled groan which broke from
the man's lips. Captain Granet sprang to his feet.

"Good heavens! The fellow's in a fit!" he exclaimed.

The maitre d'hotel and several waiters came hurrying up towards the prostrate
figure, by the side of which Major Thomson was already kneeling. The manager,
who appeared upon the scene as though by magic, and upon whose face was an
expression of horror that his clients should have been so disturbed, quickly
gave his orders. The man was picked up and carried away. Major Thomson
followed behind. Two or three waiters in a few seconds succeeded in removing
the debris of the accident, the orchestra commenced a favourite waltz. The
maitre d'hotel apologised to the little groups of people for the
commotion-they were perhaps to blame for having employed a young man so
delicate-he was scarcely fit for service.

"He seemed to be a foreigner," Lady Anselman remarked, as the man addressed
his explanations to her.

"He was a Belgian, madam. He was seriously wounded at the commencement of the
war. We took him direct from the hospital."

"I hope the poor fellow will soon recover," Lady Anselman declared. "Please
do not think anything more of the affair so far as we are concerned. You must
let me know later on how he is."

The maitre d'hotel retreated with a little bow. Geraldine turned to Captain
Granet.

"I think," she said, "that you must be very kind-hearted, for a soldier."

He turned and looked at her.

"Why?"

"You must have been so many horrible sights--so many dead people, and yet--"

"Well?" he persisted.

"There was something in your face when the man staggered back, a kind of
horror almost. I am sure you felt it quite as much as any of us."

He was silent for a moment.

"In a battlefield," he observed slowly, "one naturally becomes a little
callous, but here it is different. The fellow did look ghastly ill, didn't
he? I wonder what was really the matter with him."

"We shall know when Major Thomson returns," she said.

Granet seemed scarcely to hear her words. A curious fit of abstraction had
seized him. His head was turned towards the corridor, he seemed to be
waiting.

"Queer sort of stick, Thomson," he remarked presently. "Is he a great friend
of yours, Miss Conyers?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"I have known him for some time."

Something in her tone seemed to disturb him. He leaned towards her quickly.
His face had lost its good-humoured indifference. He was evidently very much
in earnest.

"Please don't think me impertinent," he begged, "but--is he a very great
friend?"

She did not answer. She was looking over his shoulder towards where Major
Thomson, who had just returned, was answering a little stream of questions.

"The man is in a shockingly weak state," he announced. "He is a Belgian, has
been wounded and evidently subjected to great privations. His heart is very
much weakened. He had a bad fainting fit, but with a long rest he may
recover."

The little party broke up once more into groups. Granet, who had drawn for a
moment apart and seemed to be adjusting the knots of his sling, turned to
Thomson.

"Has he recovered consciousness yet?" he asked.

"Barely," was the terse reply.

"There was no special cause for his going off like that, I suppose?"

Surgeon-Major Thomson's silence was scarcely a hesitation. He was standing
perfectly still, his eyes fixed upon the young soldier.

"At present," he said, "I am not quite clear about that. If you are ready,
Geraldine?"

She nodded and they made their farewells to Lady Anselman. Granet looked
after them with a slight frown. He drew his aunt on one side for a moment.

"Why is Miss Conyers here without a chaperon?" he asked. "And why did she go
away with Thomson?"

Lady Anselman laughed.

"Didn't she tell you?"

"Tell me what?" he insisted eagerly.

Lady Anselman looked at her nephew curiously.

"Evidently," she remarked, "your progress with the young lady was not so rapid
as it seemed, or she would have told you her secret--which, by-the-bye, isn't
a secret at all. She and Major Thomson are engaged to be married."

CHAPTER III

A few rays of fugitive sunshine were brightening Piccadilly when Geraldine and
her escort left the Ritz. The momentary depression occasioned by the dramatic
little episode of a few minutes ago, seemed already to have passed from the
girl's manner. She walked on, humming to herself. As they paused to cross
the road, she glanced as though involuntarily at her companion. His dark
morning clothes and rather abstracted air created an atmosphere of sombreness
about him of which she was suddenly conscious.

"Hugh, why don't you wear uniform in town?" she asked.

"Why should I?" he replied. "After all, I am not really a fighting man, you
see."

"It's so becoming," she sighed.

He seemed to catch the reminiscent flash in her eyes as she looked down the
street, and a shadow of foreboding clouded his mind.

"You found Captain Granet interesting?"

"Very," she assented heartily. "I think he is delightful, don't you?"

"He certainly seems to be a most attractive type of young man," Thomson
admitted.

"And how wonderful to have had such adventures!" she continued. "Life has
become so strange, though, during the last few months. To think that the only
time I ever saw him before was at a polo match, and to-day we sit side by side
in a restaurant, and, although he won't speak of them, one knows that he has
had all manner of marvellous adventures. He was one of those who went
straight from the playing fields to look for glory, wasn't he, Hugh? He made
a hundred and thirty-two for Middlesex the day before the war was declared."

"That's the type of young soldier who's going to carry us through, if any one
can," Major Thomson agreed cheerfully.

She suddenly clutched at his arm.

"Hugh," she exclaimed, pointing to a placard which a newsboy was carrying,
"that is the one thing I cannot bear, the one thing which I think if I were a
man would turn me into a savage!"

They both paused and read the headlines--

PASSENGER STEAMER TORPEDOED WITHOUT WARNING IN THE IRISH SEA. TWENTY-TWO
LIVES LOST.

"That is the sort of thing," she groaned, "which makes one long to be not a
man but a god, to be able to wield thunderbolts and to deal out hell!"

"Good for you, Gerry," a strong, fresh voice behind them declared. "That's my
job now. Didn't you hear us shouting after you, Olive and I? Look!"

Her brother waved a telegram.

"You've got your ship?" Thomson inquired.

"I've got what I wanted," the young man answered enthusiastically. "I've got
a destroyer, one of the new type--forty knots an hour, a dear little row of
four-inch guns, and, my God! something else, I hope, that'll teach those
murderers a lesson," he added, shaking his fist towards the placard.

Geraldine laid her hand upon her brother's arm.

"When do you join, Ralph?"

"To-morrow night at Portsmouth," he replied. "I'm afraid we shall be several
days before we are at work. It's the Scorpion' they're giving me, Gerald--or
the mystery ship, as they call it in the navy."

"Why?" she asked.

His rather boyish face, curiously like his sister's, was suddenly transformed.

"Because we've got a rod in pickle for those cursed pirates--"

"Conyers!" Thomson interrupted.

The young man paused in his sentence. Thomson was looking towards him with a
slight frown upon his forehead.

"Don't think I'm a fearful old woman," he said. "I know we are all rather fed
up with these tales of spies and that sort of thing, but do you think it's
wise to even open your lips about a certain matter?"

"What the dickens do you know about it?" Conyers demanded.

"Nothing," Thomson assured him hastily, "nothing at all. I am only going by
what you said yourself. If there is any device on the Scorpion for dealing
with these infernal craft, I'd never breathe a word about it, if I were you.
I'd put out to sea with a seal upon my lips, even before Geraldine here and
Miss Moreton."

The young man's cheeks were a little flushed.

"Perhaps you're right," he admitted. "I was a little over-excited. To get
the Scorpion was more, even, than I had dared to hope fore. Still, before the
girls it didn't seem to matter very much. There are no spies, anyhow, hiding
in the tress of Berkeley Street," he added, glancing about them.

Thomson held up his finger and stopped a taxicab.

"You won't be annoyed with me, will you?" he said to Conyers. "If you'd heard
half the stories I had of the things we have given away quite innocently--"

"That's all right," the young man interrupted, "only you mustn't think I'm a
gas-bag just because I said a word or two here before Gerry and Olive and you,
old fellow."

"Must you go, Hugh?" Geraldine asked.

"I am so sorry," he replied, "but I must. I really have rather an important
appointment this afternoon."

"An appointment!" she grumbled. "You are in London for so short a time and
you seem to be keeping appointments all the while. I sha'nt let you go unless
you tell me what it's about."

"I have to inspect a new pattern of camp beadstead," he explained calmly. "If
I may, I will telephone directly I am free and see if you are at liberty."

She shrugged her shoulders but gave him a pleasant little nod as he stepped
into the taxi.

"Sober old stick, Thomson," her brother observed, as they started off. "I
didn't like his pulling me up like that but I expect he was right."

"I don't see what business it was of his and I think it was rather horrid of
him," Olive declared. "As though Gerry or I mattered!"

"A chap like Thomson hasn't very much discretion, you see," Ralph Conyers
remarked. "You'll have to wake him up a bit, Gerry, if you mean to get any
fun out of life."

There was just the faintest look of trouble in Geraldine's face. She remained
perfectly loyal, however.

"Some of us take life more seriously than others," she sighed. "Hugh is one
of them. When one remembers all the terrible things he must have seen,
though, it is very hard to find fault with him."

They turned into the Square and paused before Olive's turning.

"You're coming down with me, Ralph, and you too, Geraldine?" she invited.

Conyers shook his head regretfully.

"I'm due at the Admiralty at four to receive my final instructions," he said.
"I must move along at once."

The smile suddenly faded from his lips. He seemed to be listening to the
calling of the newsboys down the street. I don't know what my instructions
are going to be," he continued, dropping his voice a little, "but I'm sick of
making war the way our chaps are doing it. If ever I'm lucky enough to get
one of those murderous submarines, I can promise you one thing--there'll be no
survivors."

For a moment or two they neither of them spoke. From out of the windows of
the house before which they were standing came the music of a popular waltz.
Olive turned a way with a little shiver.

"You think I'm brutal, dear," Conyers went on, as he patted her hand.
"Remember, I've seen men killed--that's what makes the difference, Olive.
Yes, I am different! We are all different, we who've tackled the job.
Thomson's different. You young man at luncheon, Geraldine--what's his
name?--Granet--he's different. There's something big and serious grown up
inside us, and the brute is looking out. It has to be. I'll come in later,
Olive. Tell the mater I shall be home to dinner, Geraldine. The governor's
waiting down at the Admiralty for me. Good-bye, girls!"

He waved his hand and strode down towards the corner of the Square. Both
girls watched him for a few moments. His shoulders were as square as ever but
something had gone from the springiness of his gait. There was nothing left
of the sailor's jaunty swagger.

"They are all like that," Geraldine whispered "when they've been face to face
with the real thing. And we are only women, Olive."

CHAPTER IV

Surgeon-Major Thomson had apparently forgotten his appointment to view camp
bedsteads, for, a few minutes after he had left Geraldine and her brother, his
taxicab set him down before a sombre-looking house in Adelphi Terrace. He
passed through the open doorway, up two flights of stairs, drew a key of
somewhat peculiar shape from his pocket and opened a door in front of him. He
found himself in a very small hall, from which there was no egress save
through yet another door, through which he passed and stepped into a large but
singularly bare-looking apartment. Three great safes were ranged along one
side of the wall, piles of newspapers and maps were strewn all over a long
table, and a huge Ordnance map of the French and Belgian Frontiers stood upon
an easel. The only occupant of the apartment was a man who was sitting before
a typewriter in front of the window. He turned his head and rose at Thomson's
entrance, a rather short, keen-looking young man, his face slightly pitted
with smallpox, his mouth hard and firm, his eyes deep-set and bright.

"Anything happened, Ambrose?"

"A dispatch, sir," was the brief reply.

"From the War Office?"

"No, sir, it came direct."

Thomson drew the thin sheet of paper from its envelope and swept a space for
himself at the corner of the table. Then he unlocked one of the safes and
drew out from an inner drawer a parchment book bound in brown vellum. He
spread out the dispatch and read it carefully. It had been handed in at a
town near the Belgian frontier about eight hours before:--

Fifty thousand camp bedsteads are urgently required for neighbourhood of La
Guir. Please do your best for us, the matter is urgent. Double mattress if
possible. London.

For a matter of ten minutes Thomson was busy with his pencil and the
code-book. When he had finished, he studied thoughtfully the message which he
had transcribed:--

Plans for attack on La Guir communicated. Attack foiled. Believe Smith in
London.

"Anything important, sir?" the young man at the typewriter asked.

Thomson nodded but made no immediate reply. He first of all carefully
destroyed the message which he had received, and the transcription, and
watched the fragments of paper burn into ashes. Then he replaced the
code-book in the safe, which he carefully locked, and strolled towards the
window. He stood for several minutes looking out towards the Thames.

"The same thing has happened again at La Guir," he said at last.

"Any clue?"

"None. They say that he is in London now."

The two men looked at one another for a moment in grave silence. Ambrose
leaned back in his chair and frowned heavily.

"Through our lines, through Boulogne, across the Channel, through Dover
Station, out of Charing-Cross, through our own men and the best that Scotland
Yard could do for us. In London, eh?"

Thomson's face twitched convulsively. His teeth had come together with a
little snap.

"You needn't play at being headquarters, Ambrose," he said hoarsely. "I know
it seems like a miracle but there's a reason for that."

"What is it?" Ambrose asked.

"Only a few weeks after the war began," Thsomson continued thoughtfully, "two
French generals, four or five colonels, and over twenty junior and
non-commissioned officers were court-martialled for espionage. The French
have been on the lookout for that sort of thing. We haven't. There isn't one
of these men who are sitting in judgment upon us to-day, Ambrose, who would
listen to me for a single moment if I were to take the bull by the horns and
say that the traitor we seek is one of ourselves."

"You're right," Ambrose murmured, "but do you believe it?"

"I do," Thomson asserted. "It isn't only the fact of the attacks themselves
miscarrying, but it's the knowledge on the other side of exactly how best to
meet that attack. It's the exact knowledge they have as to our dispositions,
our most secret and sudden change of tactics. We've suffered enough, Ambrose,
in this country from civil spies--the Government are to blame for that. But
there are plenty of people who go blustering about, declaring that two of our
Cabinet Ministers ought to be hung, who'd turn round and give you the life if
you hinted for a moment that the same sort of thing in a far worse degree was
going on amongst men who are wearing the King's uniform."

"It's ugly," Ambrose muttered, "damned ugly!"

"Look at me," Major Thomson continued thoughtfully. "Every secret connected
with our present and future plans practically passes through my hands, yet no
one watches me. Whisper a word at the War Office that perhaps it would be as
well--just for a week, say--to test a few of my reports, and they'd laugh at
you with the air of superior beings listening to the chatter of a fool. Yet
what is there impossible about it? I may have some secret vice--avarice,
perhaps. Germany would give me the price of a kingdom for all that I could
tell them. Yet because I am an English officer I am above all suspicion.
It's magnificent, Ambrose, but it's damnably foolish."

The young man watched his chief for several moments. Thomson was standing
before the window, the cold spring light falling full upon his face, with its
nervous lines and strongly-cut, immobile features. He felt a curious
indisposition to speak, a queer sort of desire to wait on the chance of
hearing more.

"A single kink in my brain," Thomson continued, "a secret weakness, perhaps
even a dash of lunacy, and I might be quite reasonably the master-spy of the
world. I was in Berlin six weeks ago, Ambrose. There wasn't a soul who ever
knew it. I made no report, on purpose."

"Perhaps they knew and said nothing," Ambrose suggested softly.

There was a moment's silence. Thomson seemed to be considering the idea with
strange intensity. Then he shook his head.

"I think not," he decided. "When the history of this war is written, Ambrose,
with flamboyant phrases and copious rhetoric, there will be unwritten
chapters, more dramatic, having really more direct effect upon the final issue
than even the great battles which have seemed the dominant factors. Sit tight
here, Ambrose, and wait. I may be going over to Boulogne at any hour."

Thomson pushed on one side the curtains which concealed an inner room, and
passed through. In a quarter of an hour he reappeared, dressed in uniform.
His tone, his bearing, his whole manner were changed. He walked with a
springier step, he carried a little cane and he was whistling softly to
himself.

"I am going to one or two places in the Tottenham Court Road, by appointment,"
he announced, "to inspect some new patterns of camp bedsteads. You can tell
them, if they ring up from Whitehall, that I'll report myself later in the
evening."

Curiously enough, the other man, too had changed as though in sympathetic
deference to his superior officer. He had become simply the obedient and
assiduous secretary.

"Very good, sir," he said smoothly. "I'll do my best to finish the
specifications before you return."

CHAPTER V

Lord Romsey, after his luncheon-party, spent an hour at his official residence
in Whitehall and made two other calls on his way home. His secretary met him
in the spacious hall of his house in Portland Square, a few moments after he
had resigned his coat and hat to the footman.

"There is a gentleman here to see you who says that he made an appointment by
telephone, sir," he announced. "His name is Sidney--the Reverend Horatio
Sidney, he calls himself."

Lord Romsey stood for a moment without reply. His lips had come together in a
hard, unpleasant line. It was obvious that this was by no means a welcome
visitor.

"I gave no appointment, Ainsley," he remarked. "I simply said that I would
see the gentleman when he arrived in England. You had better bring him to my
study," he continued, "and be careful that no one interrupts us."

The young man withdrew and the Cabinet Minister made his way to his study. A
little of the elasticity, however, had gone from his footsteps and he seated
himself before his desk with the air of a man who faces a disagreeable quarter
of an hour. He played for a moment with a pen-holder.

"The skeleton in the cupboard," he muttered to himself gloomily. "Even the
greatest of us," he added, with a momentary return of his more inflated self,
"have them."

There was a knock at the door and the secretary reappeared, ushering in this
undesired visitor.

"This is Mr. Sidney, sir," he announced quietly.

The Cabinet Minister rose in his place and held out his hand in his best
official style, a discrete mixture of reserve and condescension. His manner
changed, however, the moment the door was closed. He withdrew his hand, which
the other had made no attempt to grasp.

"I am according you the interview you desire," he said, pointing to a chair,
"but I shall be glad if you will explain the purport of your visit in as few
words as possible. You will, I hope, appreciate the fact that your presence
here is a matter of grave embarrassment to me."

Mr. Sidney bowed. He was a tall and apparently an elderly man, dressed with
the utmost sobriety. He accepted the chair without undue haste, adjusted a
pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and took some papers from his pocket.

"Sir," he began, speaking deliberately but without any foreign accent, "I am
here to make certain proposals to you on behalf of a person who at your own
request shall be nameless."

Lord Romsey frowned ponderously and tapped the desk by his side with his thick
forefinger.

"I cannot prevent your speaking, of course," he said, "but I wish you to
understand from the first that I am not in a position to deal with any
messages or communications from your master, whoever he may be, or any one
else in your country."

"Nevertheless," the other remarked drily, "my message must be delivered."

An impulse of curiosity struggled through the gloom and apprehension of Lord
Romsey's manner. He gazed at his visitor with knitted brows.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "An Englishman?"

"It is of no consequence," was the colourless reply.

"But it is of consequence," Lord Romsey insisted. "You have dared to proclaim
yourself an ambassador to me from a country with whom England is at war. Even
a discussion between us amounts almost to treason. On second thoughts I
decline to receive you."

He held out his hand towards the electric bell which stood on his study table.
His visitor shook his head.

"I wouldn't adopt that attitude, if I were you," he said calmly. "You know
why. If you are really curious about my nationality, there is no harm in
telling you that I am an American citizen, that I have held for three years
the post of American chaplain at Brussels. Better let me say what I have come
to say."

Lord Romsey hesitated. His natural propensity for temporising asserted itself
and his finger left the bell. The other continued.

"You are in the unfortunate position, Lord Romsey, of having failed absolutely
in your duty towards your own country, and having grossly and traitorously
deceived a personage who has always treated you with the greatest kindness. I
am here to see if it is possible for you to make some amends."

"I deny every word you say," the Minister declared passionately, "and I refuse
to hear your proposition."

Mr Sidney's manner suddenly changed. He leaned forward in his chair.

"Do not be foolish," he advised. "Your last letter to a certain personage was
dated June second. I have a copy of it with me. Shall I read it to you, word
by word?"

"Thank you, I remember enough of it," Lord Romsey groaned.

"You will listen, then to what I have to say," the envoy proceeded, "or that
letter will be published in the Times to-morrow morning. You know what that
will mean--your political ruin, your everlasting disgrace. What use will this
country, blinded at the present moment by prejudice, have for a statesman, who
without authority, pledged his Government to an alliance with Germany, who
over his own signature--"

"Stop!" Lord Romsey interrupted. "There is no purpose in this. What is it
you want?"

"Your influence in the Cabinet. You are responsible for this war. It is for
you to end it."

"Rubbish!" the other exclaimed hoarsely. "You are attempting to saddle me
with a responsibility like this, simply because my personal sympathies have
always been on this die of the country you are representing."

"It is not a question of your personal sympathies," Mr. Sidney returned
swiftly. "In black and white you pledged your Government to abstain from war
against Germany."

"How could I tell," the statesman protested, "that Germany was thinking of
tearing up treaties, of entering into a campaign of sheer and scandalous
aggression?"

"You made no stipulations or conditions in what you wrote," was the calm
reply. "You pledged your word that your Government would never declare war
against Germany. You alluded to the French entente as an unnatural one. You
spoke eloquently of the kinship of spirit between England and Germany."

Lord Romsey moved uneasily in his chair. He had expected to find this an
unpleasant interview and he was certainly not being disappointed.

"Well, I was mistaken," he admitted. "What I said was true enough. I never
did believe that the Government with which I was associated would declare war
against Germany. Even now, let me tell you that there isn't a soul breathing
who knows how close the real issue was. If your people had only chosen any
other line of advance!"

"I have not come here to recriminate," Mr. Sidney declared. "That is not my
mission. I am here to state our terms for refraining from sending your
letters--your personal letters to the Kaiser--to the English Press."

Lord Romsey sprang to his feet.

"Good God, man! Do you know what you are saying?" he exclaimed.

"Perfectly," the other replied. "I told you that my errand was a serious one.
Shall I proceed?"

The Minister slowly resumed his seat. From behind the electric lamp his face
was ghastly white. In that brief pause which followed he seemed to be looking
through the walls of the room into an ugly chapter of his future. He saw the
headlines in the newspapers, the leading articles, the culmination of all the
gossip and mutterings of the last few months, the end of his political
career--a disgraceful and ignoble end! Surely no man had ever been placed in
so painful a predicament. It was treason to parley. It was disgraceful to
send this man away.

"Germany wants peace," his visitor continued calmly. "She may not have
accomplished all she wished to have accomplished by this war, and she is still
as strong as ever from a military point of view, but she wants peace. I need
say no more than that."

Lord Romsey shook his head.

"Even if I had the influence, which I haven't," he began, "it isn't a matter
of the Government at all. The country would never stand it."

"Then you had better convert the country," was the prompt reply. "Look upon
it as your duty. Remember this--you are the man in all this world, and not
the Kaiser, who is responsible for this war. But for your solemn words
pledging your country to neutrality, Germany would never have forced the issue
as she has done. Now it is for you to repair the evil. I tell you that we
want peace. The first overtures may come ostensibly through Washington, if
you will, but they must come in reality from you."

The Minister leaned back in his chair. His was the calmness of despair.

"You might as well ask me," he said simply, "to order our Fleet out of the
North Sea."

Mr. Sidney rose to his feet.

"I think," he advised, "that you had better try what you can do, Lord Romsey.
We shall give you little time. We may even extend it, if we find traces of
your influence. You have two colleagues, at least, who are pacifists at
heart. Take them on one side, talk in a whisper at first. Plant just a
little seed but be careful that it grows. We do not expect impossibilities,
only--remember what failure will mean to you."

Lord Romsey looked steadfastly at his visitor. Mr. Sidney was tall and spare,
and there was certainly nothing of the Teuton or the American in his
appearance or accent. His voice was characterless, his restraint almost
unnatural. Relieved of his more immediate fears, the Minister was conscious
of a renewed instinct of strong curiosity.

"How can I communicate with you, Mr.--Sidney?" he asked.

"In no way," the other replied. "When I think it advisable I shall come to
see you again."

"Are you an American or a German or an Englishman?"

"I am whichever I choose for the moment," was the cool response. "If you
doubt my credentials, I can perhaps establish myself in your confidence by
repeating the conversation which took place between you and the Kaiser on the
terrace of the Imperial Palace at Potsdam between three and four o'clock on
the afternoon of April the seventh. You gave the Kaiser a little character
sketch of your colleagues in the Cabinet, and you treated with ridicule the
bare idea that one or two of them, at any rate, would ever consent--"

"That will do," the Minister interrupted hoarsely.

"Just as you will," the other observed. "I wish you good-day, sir. The issue
is before you now quite plainly. Let us soon be able to appreciate the effect
of your changed attitude."

Lord Romsey touched his bell in silence and his visitor took a grave and
decorous leave. He walked with the secretary down the hall.

"These are sad days for all of us," he said benignly. "I have been telling
Lord Romsey of some of my experiences in Brussels. I was American chaplain at
the new church there when the war broke out. I have seen sights which I shall
never forget, horrors the memory of which will never leave me."

The secretary nodded sympathetically. He was trying to get off early,
however, and he had heard a good deal already about Belgium.

"Will you let one of the servants fetch you a taxicab?" he suggested.

"I prefer to walk a little distance," Mr. Sidney replied. "I am quite at home
in London. I was once, in fact, invited to take up a pastorate here. I wish
you good-day, sir. I have had a most interesting conversation with your
chief, a conversation which will dwell for a long time in my memory."

The secretary bowed and Mr. Sidney walked slowly to the corner of the Square.
Arrived there, he hailed a passing taxicab which drew up at once by the side
of the kerb. In stepping in, he brushed the shoulder of a man who had paused
to light a cigarette. He lingered for a moment to apologise.

"I beg your pardon," he commenced--

For a single moment his self-possession seemed to desert him. He looked into
the cold, incurious face of the man in an officer's uniform who was already
moving away, as though he had seen a ghost. His hesitation was a matter of
seconds only, however.

"It was very clumsy of me," he concluded.

Major Thomson touched his cap as he moved off.

"Quite all right," he said serenely.

CHAPTER VI

The room was a study in masculine luxury. The brown walls were hung with a
choice selection of sporting prints, varied here and there with silverpoint
etchings of beautiful women in various poses. There were a good many
photographs, mostly signed, above the mantelpiece; a cigar cabinet, a case of
sporting-rifles and shot guns, some fishing tackle, a case of books,
distributed appropriately about the apartment. There were some warlike
trophies displayed without ostentation, a handsome writing-table on which
stood a telephone. On a thick green rug stretched in front of the fireplace,
a fox terrier lay blinking at the wood fire. The room was empty and silent
except for the slow ticking of an ancient clock which stood underneath an
emblazoned coat of arms in the far corner. The end of a log broke off and
fell hissing into the hearth. The fox terrier rose reluctantly to his feet,
shook himself and stood looking at the smoking fragment in an aggrieved
manner. Satisfied that no personal harm was intended to him, however, he
presently curled himself up once more. Again the apartment seemed to become
the embodiment of repose. The clock, after a hoarse wheezing warning, struck
seven. The dog opened one eye and looked up at it. A few minutes later, the
peace of the place was broken in a different fashion. There was the sound of
a key being hastily fitted into the lock of the outside door. The dog rose to
his feet expectantly. The door which led into the apartment was thrown open
and hastily slammed to. A man, breathing heavily, stood for a moment upon the
threshold, his head stooped a little as though listening. Then, without a
glance, even, at the dog who jumped to greet him, he crossed the room with
swift, stealthy footsteps. Before he could reach the other side, however, the
door which faced him was opened. A man-servant looked inquiringly out.

"My bath and clothes, Jarvis, like hell!"

The man gilded away, his master following close behind. From somewhere
further inside the flat, the sound of water running into a bath was heard.
The door was closed, again there was silence. The fox terrier, after a few
moments' scratching at the door, resumed his place upon the rug and curled
himself up to renewed slumber.

The next interruption was of a different nature. The sharp, insistent summons
of an electric bell from outside rang through the room. In a moment or two
the man-servant appeared from the inner apartment, crossed the floor and
presently reappeared, ushering in a visitor.

"Captain Granet is changing for dinner at present, sir," he explained. "If
you will take a seat, however, he will be out presently. What name shall I
say?"

"Surgeon-Major Thomson."

The servant wheeled an easy-chair up towards the fire and placed by its side a
small table on which were some illustrated papers. Then, with a little bow,
he disappeared through the inner door. Major Thomson, who had been fingering
the Sketch, laid it down the moment the door was closed. He leaned forward,
his face a little strained. He had the air of listening intently. After a
brief absence the man returned.

"Captain Granet will be with you in a few moments, sir," he announced.

"Please ask him not to hurry," Major Thomson begged.

"Certainly, sir."

The man withdrew and once more Thomson and the dog were alone. The latter,
having made a few overtures of friendship which passed unnoticed, resumed his
slumbers. Major Thomson sat upright in his easy-chair, an illustrated paper
in his hand. All the time, however, his eyes seemed to be searching the room.
His sense of listening was obviously quickened; he had the air, even, of
thinking rapidly. Five--ten minutes passed. Then voices were heard from
within and the door was suddenly opened. Captain Granet emerged and crossed
the room, hobbling slightly towards his visitor.

"Awfully sorry to keep you like this," he remarked pleasantly. "The fact is
I'd just got into my bath."

"I ought to apologise," his visitor replied, "for calling at such a time."

"Glad to see you, anyway," the other declared, pausing at his smoking-cabinet
and bringing out some cigarettes. "Try one of these, won't you?"

"Not just now, thanks."

There was a moment's pause. Major Thomson seemed in no hurry to explain
himself.

"Jolly luncheon party, wasn't it?" Granet remarked, lighting a cigarette for
himself with some difficulty. "What an idiot it makes a fellow feel to be
strapped up like this!"

"From what one reads of the fighting around Ypres," the other replied, "you
were lucky to get out of it so well. Let me explain, if I may, why I have
paid you this rather untimely call."

Captain Granet nodded amiably. He had made himself comfortable in an
easy-chair and was playing with the dog, who had jumped on to his knee.

"I had some conversation on Thursday last," Major Thomson began, "with the
Provost-Marshal of Boulogne. As you, of course, know, we have suffered a
great deal, especially around Ypres, from the marvellous success of the German
Intelligence Department. The Provost-Marshal, who is a friend of mine, told
me that there was a special warning out against a person purporting to be an
American chaplain who had escaped from Belgium. You don't happen to have
heard of him, I suppose, do you?"

Captain Granet looked doubtful.

"Can't remember that I have," he replied. "They've been awfully clever, those
fellows, though. The last few nights before our little scrap they knew
exactly what time our relief parties came along. Several times we changed the
hour. No use! They were on to us just the same.

Major Thompson nodded.

"Well," he continued, "I happened to catch sight of a man who exactly
resembled the photograph which my friend the Provost-Marshal showed me, only a
few minutes ago, and although I could not be sure of it, I fancied that he
entered this building. It occurred to me that he might be paying a call upon
you."

"Upon me?" he repeated.

"He is an exceedingly plausible fellow," Thomson explained, "and as you are
just back from the Front, and brought dispatches, he might very possibly
regard you as a likely victim."

"Can't make bricks without straw," Granet laughed, "and I know no more about
the campaign than my two eyes have seen. I was saying only yesterday that,
unless you have a staff billet, it's wonderful how little the ordinary soldier
picks up as to what is going on. As a matter of fact, though," he went on,
twisting the fox terrier's ear a little, "no one has called here at all except
yourself, during the last hour or two. There aren't many of my pals know I'm
back yet."

"Are there many other people living in the building?" Major Thomson asked.

"The ground-floor here," the other replied, "belongs to a prosperous cigarette
manufacturer who lives himself upon the first floor. This is the second and
above us are nothing but the servants' quarters. I should think," he
concluded thoughtfully, "that you must have been mistaken about the fellow
turning in here at all."

Thomson nodded.

"Very likely," he admitted. "It was just a chance, any way."

"By-the-bye," Granet inquired curiously, looking up from the dog, "how did you
know that I roomed here?"

"I happened to see you come in, or was it go out, the other day--I can't
remember which," Major Thomson replied.

The telephone upon the table tinkled out a summons. Granet crossed the room
and held the receiver to his ear.

"This is Captain Granet speaking," he said. "Who are you, please?"

The reply seemed to surprise him. He glanced across at his visitor.

"I shall be delighted," he answered into the instrument. "It is really very
kind of you. . . .About a quarter past eight? . . . Certainly! You'll excuse
my not being able to get into mufti, won't you? . . . Ever so many thanks. . .
. Good-bye!"

He laid down the receiver and turned to Thomson.

"Rather a coincidence," he observed. "Seems I am going to see you to-night at
dinner. That was Miss Geraldine Conyers who just rang up--asked me if I'd
like to meet her brother again before he goes off. He is spending the
afternoon at the Admiralty and she thought I might be interested."

Major Thomson's face was expressionless and his murmured word non-committal.
Granet had approached the dark mahogany sideboard and was fingering some
bottles.

"Let me mix you a cocktail," he suggested. "By Jove! That fellow Conyers
would be the fellow for your American chaplain to get hold of. If he is
spending the afternoon down at the Admiralty, he'll have all the latest tips
about how they mean to deal with the submarines. I hear there are at least
three or four new inventions which they are keeping dark. You like yours dry,
I suppose?"

Thomson had risen to his feet and leaned forward towards the mirror for a
moment to straighten his tie. When he turned around, he glanced at the
collection of bottles Granet had been handling.

"I am really very sorry," he said. "I did not mean to put you to this
trouble. I never drink cocktails."

Granet paused in shaking the silver receptacle, and laid it down.

"Have a whisky and soda instead?"

Thomson shook his head.

"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will drink your health at dinner-time. I
have no doubt that your cocktails are excellent but I never seem to have
acquired the habit. What do you put in them?"

"Oh! just both sorts of vermouth and gin, and a dash of something to give it a
flavour," Granet explained carelessly.

Thomson touched a small black bottle, smelt it and put it down.

"What's that?" he asked.

"A mixture of absinth and some West Indian bitters," Granet replied. "A chap
who often goes to the States brought it back for me. Gives a cocktail the
real Yankee twang, he says."

Thomson nodded slowly.

"Rather a curious odour," he remarked. "We shall meet again, then, Captain
Granet."

They walked towards the door. Granet held it open, leaning upon his stick.

"Many times, I trust," he observed politely.

There was a second's pause. His right hand was half extended but his
departing guest seemed not to notice the fact. He merely nodded and put on
his hat.

"It is a small world," he said, "especially, although it sounds paradoxical,
in the big places."

He passed out. Granet listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps with
a frown upon his forehead. Then he came back and stood for a moment upon the
rug in front of the fire, deep in thought. The fox terrier played unnoticed
about his feet. His face seemed suddenly to have become older and more
thoughtful. He glanced at the card which Thomson had left upon the sideboard.

"Surgeon-Major Thomson," he repeated quietly to himself. "I wonder!"

Thomson walked slowly to the end of Sackville Street, crossed the road and
made his way to the Ritz Hotel. He addressed himself to the head clerk of the
reception counter.

"I am Surgeon-Major Thomson," he announced.

"I was lunching here to-day and attended one of the waiters who was taken ill
afterwards. I should be very glad to know if I can see him for a few
moments."

The man bowed politely.

"I remember you quite well, sir," he said. "A Belgian waiter, was it not? He
has been taken away by a lady this afternoon."

"Taken away?" Thomson repeated, puzzled.

"The lady who was giving the luncheon--Lady Anselman--called and saw the
manager about an hour ago," the man explained. "She has interested herself
very much in the matter of Belgian refugees and is entertaining a great many
of them at a house of hers near the seaside. The man is really not fit to
work, so we were very glad indeed to pass him on to her."

"He recovered consciousness before he was removed, I suppose?" Thomson
inquired.

"I believe so, sir. He seemed very weak and ill, though. In fact he had to
be carried to the automobile."

"I suppose he didn't give any reason for his sudden attack?"

"None that I am aware of, sir."

Thomson stood for a moment deep in thought, then he turned away from the desk.

"Thank you very much indeed," he said to the clerk. "The man's case rather
interested me. I think I shall ask Lady Anselman to allow me to visit him.
Where did you say the house was?"

"Her ladyship did not mention the exact locality," the man replied. "I
believe, however, that it is near the Isle of Wight."

"A most suitable neighbourhood," Major Thomson murmured, as he turned away
from the hotel.

CHAPTER VII

"I wonder why you don't like Captain Granet?" Geraldine asked her fiance, as
they stood in the drawing-room waiting for dinner.

"Not like him?" Thomson repeated. "Have I really given you that impression,
Geraldine?"

The girl nodded.

"Perhaps I ought not to say that, though," she confessed. "You are never
particularly enthusiastic about people, are you?"

One of his rare smiles transfigured his face. He leaned a little towards her.

"Not about many people, Geraldine," he whispered.

She made a charming little grimace but a moment afterwards she was serious
again.

"But really," she continued, "to me Captain Granet seems just the type of
young Englishman who is going to save the country. He is a keen soldier,
clever, modest, and a wonderful sportsman. I can't think what there is about
him fro any one to dislike."

Major Thomson glanced across the room. In a way, he and the man whom he felt
instinctively was in some sense of the word his rival, even though an
undeclared one, were of exactly opposite types. Granet was the centre of a
little group of people who all seemed to be hanging upon his conversation. He
was full of high spirits and humour, debonair, with all the obvious claims to
popularity. Thomson, on the other hand, although good-looking, even
distinguished in his way, was almost too slim and pale. His face was more the
face of a scholar than of one interested in or anxious to shine in the social
side of life. His manners and his speech were alike reserved, his air of
breeding was apparent, but he had not the natural ease or charm which was
making Granet, even in those few minutes, persona grata with Geraldine's
mother and a little circle of newly-arrived guests.

"At least I appreciate your point of view," Major Thomson admitted, with a
faint sigh.

"Don't be such a dear old stick," Geraldine laughed. "I want you to like him
because I find him so interesting. You see, as he gets to know one a little
better he doesn't seem to mind talking about the war. You others will
scarcely say a word of what you have seen or of what is being done out there.
I like to be told things by people who have actually seen them. He happened
to be ten minutes early this evening and he gave me a most fascinating
description of some skirmishing near La Bassee."

"You must remember," Thomson told her, "that personally I do not, in an
ordinary way, see a great deal of fighting until the whole show is over. It
may be a fine enough panorama when an attack is actually taking place, but
there is nothing very inspiring in the modern battlefield when the living have
passed away from it."

Geraldine shivered for a moment.

"Really, I almost wish that you were a soldier, too," she declared. "Your
work seems to me so horribly gruesome. Come along, you know you are going to
take me to dinner. Think of something nice to say. I really want to be
amused."

"I will make a suggestion, then," he remarked as they took their places. "I
don't know whether you will find it amusing, though. Why shouldn't we do like
so many of our friends, and get married?"

She stared at him for a moment. Then she laughed heartily.

"Hugh," she exclaimed, "I can see through you! You've suddenly realised that
this is your chance to escape a ceremony and a reception, and all that sort of
thing. I call it a most cowardly suggestion."

"It rather appeals to me," he persisted. "It may be," he added, dropping his
voice a little, "because you are looking particularly charming this evening,
or it may be--"

She looked at him curiously.

"Go on, please," she murmured.

"Or it may be," he repeated, "a man's desire to be absolutely sure of the
thing he wants more than anything else in the world."

There was a moment's silence. As though by some curious instinct which they
both shared, they glanced across the table to where Granet had become the
centre of a little babble of animated conversation. Geraldine averted her
eyes almost at once, and looked down at her plate. There was a shade of
uneasiness in her manner.

"You sounds very serious, Hugh," she observed.

"That is rather a failing of mine, isn't it?" he replied. "At any rate, I am
very much in earnest."

There was another brief silence, during which Geraldine was addressed by her
neighbour on the other side. Thomson, who was watching her closely, fancied
that she accepted almost eagerly the opportunity of diversion. It was not
until dinner was almost over that she abandoned a conversion into which she
had thrown herself with spirit.

"My little suggestion," Thomson reminded her, "remains unanswered."

She looked down at her plate.

"I don't think you are really in earnest," she said.

"Am I usually a farceur?" he replied. "I think that my tendencies are rather
the other way. I really mean it, Gerald. Shall we talk about it later on
this evening?"

"If you like," she agreed simply, "but somehow I believe that I would rather
wait. Look at mother's eye, roving around the table. Give me my gloves,
please, Hugh. Don't be long."

Thomson moved his chair next to his host's Geraldine's father, Admiral Sir
Seymour Conyers, was a very garrulous old gentleman with fixed ideas about
everything, a little deaf and exceedingly fond of conversation. He proceeded
to give his prospective son-in-law a detailed lecture concerning the
mismanagement of the field hospitals at the front, and having disposed of that
subject, he opened a broadside attack upon the Admiralty. The rest of the men
showed indications of breaking into little groups. Ralph Conyers and Granet
were sitting side by side, engrossed in conversation. More than once Thomson
glanced towards them.

"Wish I understood more about naval affairs," Granet sighed. "I'm a perfect
ass at any one's job but my own. I can't see how you can deal with submarines
at all. The beggars can stay under the water as long as they like, they just
pop up and show their heads, and if they don't like the look of anything near,
down they go again. I don't see how you can get at them, any way."

The young sailor smiled in a somewhat superior manner.

"We've a few ideas left still which the Germans haven't mopped up," he
declared.

"Personally," the Admiral observed, joining in the conversation, "I consider
the submarine danger the greatest to which this country has yet been exposed.
No one but a nation of pirates, of ferocious and conscienceless huns, could
have inaugurated such a campaign."

"Good for you, dad!" his son exclaimed. "They're a rotten lot of beggars, of
course, although some of them have behaved rather decently. There's one
thing," he added, sipping his port, "there isn't a job in the world I'd sooner
take on than submarine hunting."

"Every one to his taste," Granet remarked good-humouredly. "Give me my own
company at my back, my artillery well posted, my reserves in position, the
enemy not too strongly entrenched, and our dear old Colonel's voice shouting
'At them, boys!' That's my idea of a scrap."

There was a little murmur of sympathy. Ralph Conyers, however, his cigar in
the corner of his mouth, smiled imperturbably.

"Sounds all right," he admitted, "but for sheer excitement give me a misty
morning, the bows of a forty-knot destroyer cutting the sea into diamonds,
decks cleared for action, and old Dick in oilskins on the salute--'Enemy's
submarine, sir, on the port bow, sir.'"

"And what would you do then?" Granet asked.

"See page seven Admiralty instructions this afternoon," the other replied,
smiling. "We're not taking it sitting down, I can tell you."

The Admiral rose and pushed back his chair.

"I think," he said, "if you are quite sure, all of you, that you will take no
more port, we should join the ladies."

They trooped out of the room together. Thomson kept close behind Ralph
Conyers and Captain Granet, who were talking no more of submarines, however,
but of the last ballet at the Empire. Geraldine came towards them as they
entered the drawing-room.

"Hugh," she begged, passing her arm through his, "would you mind playing
bridge?"  The Mulliners are going on, and mother does miss her rubber so. And
we can talk afterwards, if you like," she added.

Thomson glanced across the room to where Granet was chatting with some other
guests. Young Conyers for the moment was nowhere to be seen.

"I'll play, with pleasure, Geraldine," he assented, "but I want to have a word
with Ralph first."

"He's at the telephone," she said. "The Admiralty rang up about something and
he is talking to them. I'll tell him, if you like, when he comes up."

"If you'll do that," Thomson promised, "I won't keep him a minute."

The little party settled down to their game--Lady Conyers, Sir Charles
Hankins,--a celebrated lawyer,--another man and Thomson. Geraldine, with
Olive Moreton and Captain Granet, found a sofa in a remote corner of the room
and the trio were apparently talking nonsense with great success. Presently
Ralph reappeared and joined them.

"Hugh wants to speak to you," Geraldine told him.

Ralph glanced at the little bridge-table and made a grimace.

"Hugh can wait," he declared, as he passed his arm through Olive's. "This is
my last night on shore for heaven knows how long and I am going to take Olive
off to see my photographs of the 'Scorpion.'  Old Wilcock handed them to me
out of his drawer this afternoon."

The two young people disappeared. Captain Granet and Geraldine remained upon
the couch, talking in low voices. Once Thomson, when he was dummy, crossed
the room and approached them. Their conversation was suddenly suspended.

"I told Ralph," Geraldine said, looking up, "that you wanted to speak to him,
but he and Olive have gone off somewhere. By-the-bye, Hugh," she went on
curiously, "you didn't tell me that you'd called on Captain Granet this
evening."

"Well, it wasn't a matter of vital importance, was it?" he answered, smiling.
"My call, in any case, arose from an accident."

"Major Thomson," came a voice from the other side of the room, "it is your
deal."

Thomson returned obediently to the bridge-table. The rubber was over a few
minutes later and the little party broke up. Thomson glanced around but the
room was empty.

"I think, if I may," he said, "I'll go into the morning room and have a whisky
and soda. I dare say I'll find the Admiral there."

He took his leave of the others and made his way to the bachelor rooms at the
back of the house. He looked first into the little apartment which Geraldine
claimed for her own, but found it empty. He passed on into the smoking-room
and found all four of the young people gathered around the table. They were
so absorbed that they did not even notice his entrance. Ralph, with a sheet
of paper stretched out before him and a pencil in his hand, was apparently
sketching something. By his side was Granet. The two girls with arms
interlocked, were watching intently.

"You see," Ralph Conyers explained, drawing back for a moment to look at the
result of his labours, "this scheme, properly worked out, can keep a channel
route such as the Folkestone to Boulogne one, for instance, perfectly safe.
Those black marks are floats, and the nets--"

"One moment, Ralph," Thomson interrupted from the background.

They all started and turned their heads. Thomson drew a step nearer and his
hand fell upon the paper. There was a queer look in his face which Geraldine
was beginning to recognise.

"Ralph, old fellow," he said, "don't think me too much of an interfering
beggar, will you? I don't think even to your dearest friend, not to the girl
you are going to marry, to me, or to your own mother, would I finish that
little drawing and description, if I were you."

They all stared at him. Granet's face was expressionless, the girls were
bewildered, Ralph was frowning.

"Dash it all, Hugh," he expostulated, "do have a little common sense. Here's
a fellow like Granet, a keen soldier and one of the best, doing all he can for
us on land but a bit worried about our submarine danger. Why shouldn't I try
and reassure him, eh?--let him see that we've a few little things up our
sleeves?"

"That sounds all right, Ralph," Thomson agreed, "but you're departing from a
principle, and I wouldn't do it. It isn't a personal risk you're running, or
a personal secret you're sharing with others. It may sound absurd under the
present circumstances, I know, but--"

Granet laughed lightly. His arm fell upon the young sailor's shoulder.

"Perhaps Thomson's right, Conyers," he intervened. "You keep your old scheme
at the back of your head. We'll know all about it when the history of the
war's written. There's always the thousand to one chance, you know. I might
get brain fever in a German hospital and begin to babble. Tear it up, old
fellow."

There was a moment's silence. Geraldine turned to Thomson.

"Hugh," she protested, "don't you think you're carrying principle almost too
far? It's so fearfully interesting for us when Ralph's at sea, and we wait
day by day for news from him, to understand a little what he's doing."

"I think you're a horrid nuisance, Major Thomson," Olive grumbled. "We'd just
reached the exciting part."

"I am sorry," Thomson said, "but I think, Ralph, you had better do what
Captain Granet suggested."

The young man shrugged his shoulders, his face was a little sulky. He took
the plan up and tore it into pieces.

"If you weren't my prospective brother-in-law, you know, Thomson," he
exclaimed, "I should call your interference damned cheek! After all, you
know, you're only a civilian, and you can't be expected to understand these
things."

Thomson was silent for a moment. He read in the others' faces their sympathy
with the young sailor's complaint. He moved towards the door.

"I am sorry," he said simply. "Good night, everybody!"

They all wished him good-night--nobody stirred. He walked slowing into the
front hall, waited for a moment and then accepted his coat and hat from a
servant. Lady Conyers waved to him from the staircase.

"Where's Geraldine?" she asked.

Thomson turned away.

"They are all in the smoking-room, Lady Conyers," he said. "Good night!"

CHAPTER VIII

In a way, their meeting the next morning was fortuitous enough, yet it had
also its significance for both of them. Geraldine's greeting was almost
studiously formal.

"You are not going to scold me for my memory, are you?" Captain Granet asked,
looking down at her with a faintly humorous uplifting of the eyebrows. "I
must have exercise, you know."

"I don't even remember telling you that I came into the Park in the mornings,"
Geraldine replied.

"You didn't--that is to say you didn't mention the Park particularly," he
admitted. "You told me you always took these five dogs out for a walk
directly after breakfast, and for the rest I used my intelligence."

"I might have gone into Regent's Park or St. James' Park," she reminded him.

"In which case," he observed, "I should have walked up and down until I had
had enough of it, and then gone away in a bad temper."

"Don't be foolish," she laughed. "I decline absolutely to believe that you
had a single thought of me when you turned in here. Do you mind if I say that
I prefer not to believe it?"

He accepted the reproof gracefully.

"Well, since we do happen to have met," he suggested, "might I walk with you a
little way? You see," he went on, "it's rather dull hobbling along here all
alone."

"Of course you may, if you like," she assented, glancing sympathetically at
his stick. "How is your leg getting on?"

"It's better--getting on finely. So far as my leg is concerned, I believe I
shall be fit to go out again within ten days. It's my arm that bothers me a
little. One of the nerves, the doctor said, must be wrong. I can only just
lift it. You've no idea," he went on, "how a game leg and a trussed-up arm
interfere with the little round of one's daily life. I can't ride, can't play
golf or billiards, and for an unintelligent chap like me," he wound up with a
sigh, "there aren't a great many other ways of passing the time."

"Why do you call yourself unintelligent?" she protested. "You couldn't have
got through your soldiering so well if you had been."

"Oh! I know all the soldier stuff," he admitted, "know my job, that is to say,
all right, and of course I am moderately good at languages, but that finishes
me. I haven't any brains like your friend Thomson, for instance."

"Major Thomson is very clever, I believe," she said a little coldly.

"And a little censorious, I am afraid," Granet added with a slight grimace.
"I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really can't see why
he needed to go for your brother last night just because he was gratifying a
very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn't as though I wasn't in the
Service. The Army and the Navy are the same thing, any way, and we are always
glad to give a Navy man a hint as to how we are getting on."

"I really couldn't quite understand Major Thomson myself," she agreed.

"May I ask--do you mind?" he began,--"have you been engaged to him long?"

She looked away for a moment. Her tone, when she replied, was meant to convey
some slight annoyance at the question.

"About three months."

Captain Granet kicked a pebble away from the path in front of him with his
sound foot.

"I should think he must be a very good surgeon," he remarked in a measured
tone. "Looks as though he had lots of nerve, and that sort of thing. To tell
you the truth, though, he rather frightens me. I don't think that he has much
sympathy with my type."

She became a little more indulgent and smiled faintly as she looked at him.

"I wonder what your type is?" she asked reflectively.

"Fairly obvious, I am afraid," he confessed, with a sigh. "I love my
soldiering, of course, and I am ashamed to think how keen I have been on
games, and should be still if I had the chance. Outside that I don't read
much, I am not musical, and I am very much predisposed to let the future look
after itself. There are thousands just like me," he continued thoughtfully.
"We don't do any particular harm in the world but I don't suppose we do much
good."

"Don't be silly," she protested. "For one thing, it is splendid to be a
capable soldier. You are just what the country wants to-day. But apart from
that I am quite sure that you have brains."

"Have I?" he murmured. "Perhaps it's the incentive I lack."

They were silent for a few moments. Then they began to talk more lightly.
They discussed dogs and horses, their mutual friends, and their engagements
for the next few days. They did not once refer to Thomson. Presently
Geraldine paused to speak to some friends. Granet leaned upon his stick in
the background and watched her. She was wearing a plain tailor made suit and
a becoming little hat, from underneath which little wisps of golden hair had
somehow detached themselves in a fascinating disorder. There was a delicate
pink colour in her cheeks, the movements and lines of her body were all
splendidly free and graceful. As she talked to her friends her eyes for the
moment seemed to have lost their seriousness. Her youth had reasserted
itself--her youth and splendid physical health. He watched her eagerly, and
some shadow seemed to pass from his own face--the shadow of his suffering or
his pain. He, too, seemed to grow younger. The simplest and yet the most
wonderful joy in life was thrilling him. At last she bade farewell to her
friends and came smiling towards him.

"I am so sorry to have kept you all this time!" she exclaimed. "Lady Anne has
just told me the time and I am horrified. I meant to walk here for an hour
and we have been here for two. Stop that taxi for me, please. I cannot spare
the time even to walk home."

He handed her into the cab and whistled for the dogs, who all scrambled in
after her.

"Thanks to much for looking after a helpless cripple," he said pleasantly, as
they shook hands. "You mustn't grudge the time. Doing your duty to the
country, you know."

He tactfully avoided any mention of a future meeting and was rewarded with a
little wave of her hand from the window of the cab. He himself left the Park
at the same time, strolled along Piccadilly as far as Sackville Street and let
himself into his rooms. His servant came forward to meet him from the inner
room, and took his cap and stick.

"Any telephone messages, Jarvis?"

"Nothing, sir."

Granet moved towards the easy-chair. On the way he stopped. The door of one
of the cupboards in the sideboard was half open. He frowned.

"Haven't I told you, Jarvis, that I wish those cupboards kept locked?" he
asked a little curtly.

The man was staring towards the sideboard in some surprise.

"I am very sorry, sir," he said. "I certainly believed that I locked it last
night."

Granet opened it wide and looked inside. His first glance was careless
enough, then his expression changed. He stared incredulously at the small
array of bottles and turned swiftly around.

"Have you moved anything from here?"

"Certainly not, sir," was the prompt reply.

Granet closed the cupboard slowly. Then he walked to the window for a moment,
his hands behind his back.

"Any one been here this morning at all, Jarvis?" he inquired.

"A man for the laundry, sir, and a person to test the electric light."

"Left alone in the room at all?"

"The electric light man was here for a few minutes, sir."

The master and servant exchanged quick glances. The latter was looking pale
and nervous.

"Is anything missing, sir?" he asked.

"Yes!" Granet replied. "Did you notice the gentleman who called last
evening--Surgeon-Major Thomson?"

"Yes, sir!"

"You haven't seen him since? He hasn't been here?"

"No, sir!"

Granet stood, for a moment, thinking. The servant remained motionless. The
silence in the room was ominous; so, also, was the strange look of disquietude
in the two men's faces.

"Jarvis," his master said at last, "remember this. I am not finding fault. I
know you are always careful. But from tonight be more vigilant than ever.
There is a new hand in the game. He may not suspect us yet but he will. You
understand, Jarvis?"

"Perfectly, sir."

The man withdrew noiselessly. Once more Granet walked to the window. He
looked down for a few minutes at the passers-by but he saw nothing. Grave
thoughts were gathering together in his mind. He was travelling along the
road of horrors and at the further end of it a man stood waiting. He saw
himself draw nearer and nearer to the meeting his name almost frame itself
upon his lips, the name of the man whom he had grown to hate.

CHAPTER IX

Considering the crowded state of the waiting-room and the number of highly
important people who were there for the same purpose, Surgeon-Major Thomson
seemed to have remarkably little difficulty in procuring the interview he
desired. He was conducted by a boy scout into a room on the second floor of
the War Office, within a few minutes of his arrival. A tall, grey-haired man
in the uniform of a general looked up and nodded with an air of intimacy as
soon as the door had been closed.

"Sit down, Thomson. We've been expecting you. Any news?"

"I have come to you for that, sir," the other replied.

The General sighed.

"I am afraid you will be disappointed," he said. "I received your report and
I went to a certain official myself--saw him in his own house before breakfast
this morning. I had reports of three other men occupying responsible
positions in the city, Thomson, against whom there was really tangible and
serious evidence. Our friend had the effrontery almost to laugh at me."

There was a little glitter in Thomson's eyes.

"These damned civilians!" he murmured softly. "They've done their best to
ruin Great Britain by crabbing every sort of national service during the last
ten years. They feed and pamper the vermin who are eating away the
foundations of the country, and, damn it all, when we put a clear case to
them, when we show them men whom we know to be dangerous, they laugh at us and
tell us that it isn't our department! They look upon us as amateurs and speak
of Scotland Yard with bated breath. My God! If I had a free hand for ten
minutes, there'd be two Cabinet Ministers eating bread and water instead of
their dinners to-night."

The General raised his eyebrows. He knew Thomson well enough to be aware how
unusual such an ebullition of feeling on his part was.

"Got you a bit worked up, Major," he remarked.

"Isn't it enough to make any man's blood boil?" the other replied. "The
country to-day looks to its army and its navy to save it from the humiliation
these black-coated parasites have encouraged, and yet even now we haven't a
free hand. You and I, who control the secret service of the army, denounce
certain men, upon no slight evidence, either, as spies, and we are laughed at!
One of those very blatant idiots whose blundering is costing the country
millions of money and thousands of brave men, has still enough authority to
treat our reports as o much waste paper."

"I am bound to say I agree with you, Thomson," the General declared, a little
hopelessly. "It's the weakest spot of our whole organisation, this depending
on the civil powers. Tow of my cases were absolutely flagrant. As regards
yours, Thomson, I am not at all sure that we shouldn't be well-advised to get
just a little more evidence before we press the matter."

"And meanwhile," Thomson retorted bitterly, "leave him a free hand to do what
mischief he can. But for the merest accident in the world, the night before
last he would have learnt our new scheme for keeping the Channel communication
free from submarines."

The General frowned.

"Who's been talking?" he demanded.

"No one who is to be blamed," Thomson replied. "Can't you realise the
position? Here's a fellow Service man, a soldier, a D. S. O., who has been
specially mentioned for bravery and who very nearly got the Victoria Cross,
comes here with the halo of a brilliant escape from the Germans, wounded, a
young man of good family and connections, and apparently as keen as mustard to
get back again in the fighting line. Good Heavens! The most careful sailor
in the world might just drop a hint to that sort of man. What nearly happened
last night may happen a dozen times within the next week. Even our great
secret, General," Thomson continued, dropping his voice a little, "even that
might come to his ears."

The General was undoubtedly disturbed. He searched amongst the papers on his
desk and brought out at last a flimsy half-sheet of notepaper which he studied
carefully.

"Just read this, Thomson."

Thomson rose and looked over his shoulder. The letter was an autograph one of
a few lines only, and dated from a village in the North of France--

My dear Brice,

This is a special request to you. Arrange it any way you please but don't
send me Captain Grent out again in any capacity. Keep him at home. Mind, I
am not saying word against him as a soldier. He has done some splendid work
on more than one occasion, but notwithstanding this I do not wish to see him
again with any of the forces under my command.

                                  Ever yours,

                                            F.

"Did you show this to our friend?" Thomson inquired.

"I gave him a digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a
supercilious manner and said I had better do as I was asked."

Thomson said nothing for a moment. His face was very set and he had the air
of a man desperately but quietly angry.

"As a matter of fact," General Brice continued, glancing at the clock on his
desk, "Granet is in my anteroom at the present moment, I expect. He asked for
an interview this afternoon."

"Have him in, if you don't mind," the other suggested. "I can sit at the
empty desk over there. I can be making some calculations with reference to
the number of hospital beds for each transport. I want to hear him talk to
you."

The General nodded and touched a bell.

"You can show Captain Granet in," he told the boy scout who answered it.

Thomson took his place in the far corner of the room and bent over a sheaf of
papers. Presently Granet was ushered in. He was leaning a little less
heavily upon his stick and he had taken his arm from the sling for a moment.
He saluted the General respectfully and glanced across the room towards where
Thomson was at work. If he recognised him, however, he made no sign.

"Well, Granet," the General inquired, "how are you getting on?"

"Wonderfully, sir," was the brisk reply. "I have seen my own doctor this
morning and he thinks I might come up before the Board on Saturday."

"And what does that mean?"

"I want to get back again, sir," Granet replied eagerly.

The General stroked his grey moustache and looked searchingly at the young
officer. He was standing full in the light of a ray of sunshine which came
streaming through the high, uncurtained windows. Although he was still a
little haggard, his eyes were bright, his lips were parted in an anticipatory
smile, his whole expression was engaging. General Brice, studying him
closely, felt compelled to admit the improbability of his vague suspicions.

"That's all very well, you know," he reminded him quietly, "but you won't be
fit enough for active service for some time to come."

The young man's face fell.

"I am sure they must be wanting me back, sir," he said naively.

The General shook his head.

"I don't want to disappoint you, young fellow," he continued, "but I heard
from your Brigadier only yesterday. He has been obliged to fill up your place
and I don't think he has room for any one on his staff."

Granet looked a little hurt.

"I thought he might have made a temporary appointment," he said gloomily.

"This is no time to consider individuals," the General pointed out. "What
about finding you a billet at home for a time, eh? You've seen a bit of the
rough side of the war, you know."

"I'd sooner go out and dig trenches!"

Thomson had risen slowly from his place and, with a sheet of foolscap in his
hand, closely covered with writing, crossed the room.

"You might get taken prisoner again, Captain Granet," he remarked drily.

There was a moment's rather tense silence. The young man's lips had come
together, his eyes flashed.

"I did not recognise you, Major Thomson," he said calmly. "Have you found a
new billet?"

"My old one is sufficiently absorbing just at present," the other replied
laying his calculations on the General's desk. "Forgive my interrupting you,
sir, but you told me to let you have this as soon as I had finished. That is
my estimate of the number of beds we could stow away in the cubic feet you
offer us."

The General glanced at the paper and nodded.

"Don't go, Thomson," he said. "I'll talk to you about this later on. Well,
Captain Granet," he added, "you'd better leave things in my hands. I'll do
the best I can for you."

"I shall be very disappointed if I don't get out to the Front again soon,
sir," the young man declared simply.

"I'll do the best I can," the General repeated, touching his bell.

Granet was shown out and the door was closed. General Brice turned towards
his companion.

"Thomson," he said, "frankly, I can't believe it. However, we'll find him a
billet where he can't possibly do any mischief."

"If you found him a billet where I should like to see him," Surgeon-Major
Thomson observed bitterly, "he would never do any more mischief in this world!
Any dispatches from the Front, sir?"

General Brice raised his eyebrows.

"Are you off again?" he asked.

"I am going to see that young man's General," Thomson replied. "I shall cross
over to-day and be back to-morrow night or Saturday morning."

General Brice nodded thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you are right," he assented. "Yes, I shall have a few reports.
You'd better let them know at the Admiralty, and what time you want to go
over."

Surgeon-Major Thomson shook hands with the General and turned towards the
door.

"When I come back," he said, "I hope I'll be able to convince even you, sir."

CHAPTER X

Surgeon-Major Thomson awoke about twelve hours later with a start. He had
been sleeping so heavily that he was at first unable to remember his
whereabouts. His mind moved sluggishly across the brief panorama of his
hurried journey--the special train from Victoria to Folkestone; the destroyer
which had brought him and a few other soldiers across the Channel, black with
darkness, at a pace which made even the promenade deck impossible; the landing
at Boulogne, a hive of industry notwithstanding the darkness; the clanking of
waggons, the shrieking of locomotives, the jostling of crowds, the occasional
flashing of an electric torch. And then the ride in the great automobile
through the misty night. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him. A grey
morning was breaking. The car had come to a standstill before a white gate,
in front of which was stationed a British soldier, with drawn bayonet.
Surgeon-Major Thomson pulled himself together and answered the challenge.

"A friend," he answered,--"Surgeon-Major Thomson, on his Majesty's service."

He leaned from the car for a moment and held out something in the hollow of
his hand. The man saluted and drew back. The car went along a rough road
which led across a great stretch of pastureland. On the ridge of the hills on
his right, little groups of men were at work unlimbering guns. Once or twice,
with a queer, screeching sound, a shell, like a little puff of white smoke,
passed high over the car and fell somewhere in the grey valley below. In the
distance he could see the movements of a body of troops through the trees,
soldiers on the way to relieve their comrades in the trenches. As the morning
broke, the trenches themselves came into view--long, zig-zag lines, silent,
and with no sign of the men who crawled about inside like ants. He passed a
great brewery transformed into a canteen, from which a line of waggons, going
and returning, were passing all the time backwards and forwards into the
valley. Every now and then through the stillness came the sharp crack of a
rifle from the snipers lying hidden in the little stretches of woodland and
marshland away on the right. A motor-omnibus, with its advertisement signs
still displayed but a great red cross floating above it, came rocking down the
road on its way to the field hospital in the distance. As yet, however, the
business of fighting seemed scarcely to have commenced.

They passed several small houses and farms, in front of each of which was
stationed a sentry. Once, form the hills behind, a great white-winged
aeroplane glided over his head on its way to make a reconnaissance. Queerest
sight of all, here and there were peasants at work in the fields. One old man
leaned upon his spade and watched as the car passed. Not a dozen yards from
him was a great hole in the ground where a shell had burst, and a little
further away a barn in ruins. The car was forced to stop here to let a
cavalcade of ammunition waggons pass by. Surgeon-Major Thomson leaned from
his seat and spoke to the old man.

"You are not afraid of the German shells, then?" he asked.

"Monsieur," the old man answered, "one must live or die--it does not matter
which. For the rest, if one is to live, one must eat. Therefore I work.
Four sons I have and a nephew away yonder," he added, waving his hand
southwards. "That is why I dig alone. Why do you not send us more soldiers,
Monsieur l'Anglais?"

"Wait but a little time longer," Thomson answered cheerfully.

The old man looked sadly at his ruined barn.

"It is always 'wait,'" he muttered, "and one grows old and tired. Bonjour,
monsieur!"

The car passed on again and suddenly dropped into a little protected valley.
They came to a standstill before a tiny chateau, in front of which stretched
what might once have been an ornamental garden, but which was now torn to
pieces by gun carriages, convoy waggons, and every description of vehicle.
From the top of the house stretched many wires. A sentry stood at the iron
gates and passed Major Thomson after a perfunctory challenge. An office with
mud-stained boots and wind-tossed hair, who looked as though he had been out
all night, stood on the steps of the house and welcomed Thomson.

"Hullo, Major," he called out, "just across, eh?"

"This moment," Thomson assented. "Anything fresh?"

"Nothing to speak of," the other replied. "We've just had a message in that
the French have been giving them a knock. We've had a quit time the last two
days. They're bringing up some more Bavarians, we think."

"Do you think I could have a few words with the General?" Major Thomson asked.

"Come in and have some coffee. Yes, he'll see you, of course. He is in his
own room with two of the flying men, just for the moment. I'll let you know
when you can go in."

They passed into an apartment which had once been the dining-room of the
chateau, and in which a long table was laid. One or two staff officers
greeted Thomson, and the man who had brought him in attended to his wants.

"The General had his breakfast an hour ago," the latter observed. "We're
pretty well forward here and we have to keep on the qui vive. We got some
shells yesterday dropped within a quarter of a mile of us. I think we're
going to try and give them a push back on the left flank. I'll go in and see
about you, Thomson."

"Good fellow! You might tell them to give my chauffeur something. The
destroyer that brought me over is waiting at Boulogne, and I want to be in
London to-night."

One of the officers from the other side of the table, smiled queerly.

"London! My God!" he muttered. "There is still a London, I suppose? Savoy
and Carlton going still? Pall Mall where it was?"

"And very much as it was," Thomson assured him. "London's wonderfully
unchanged. You been out long?"

"September the second," was the cheerful reply. "I keep on getting promised a
week but I can't bring it off."

"He's such a nut with the telephones," the man by his side explained, helping
himself to marmalade. "The General positively can't spare him."

"Oh, chuck it!" the other exclaimed in disgust. "What about you?--the only
man with an eye to a Heaven-ordained gun position, as old Wattles declared one
day. We're all living wonders, Major," he went on, turning to Thomson, "but
if I don't get a Sole Colbert and a grill at the Savoy, and a front seat at
the Alhambra, before many weeks have passed, I shall get stale--that's what'll
happen to me."

"Hope you'll have your hair cut before you go back, a man from the other end
of the table remarked. "Your own mother wouldn't know you like that--much
less your sweetheart."

The young man fingered his locks reflectively.

"Chap who was going to cut it for me got shot yesterday," he grumbled.
"Anything doing as you came over the ridge, Major?"

Thomson shook his head.

"One aeroplane and a few shells."

"That would be Johnny Oates going out in his Bleriot," some one remarked.
"He'll be back here before long with a report."

The officer who had met Thomson in the garden, re-entered the room.

"General says he'll see you at once," he announced.

Thomson followed his guide into a small back room. An officer was seated
before a desk, writing, another was shouting down a telephone, and a third was
making some measurements upon a large Ordnance map nailed upon one of the
walls. The General was standing with his back to the fire and a pipe in his
mouth. He nodded cheerily to Thomson.

"When did you leave London?" he asked.

"Nine o'clock last evening, sir," Thomson replied. "Rather a record trip. We
had a special down and a destroyer over."

"And I'm going to tell you what you want to know," the General continued
glancing at a document in his hand. "Well, close the door, Harewood. Out
with it?"

"It's about Captain Granet of Harrison's staff," Thomson began.

The General frowned and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Well," he asked, "what is it?"

"We've reasons of our own for wishing to know exactly what you meant by asking
the War Office not to send him back again," Thomson continued.

The General hesitated.

"Well, what are they?"

"They are a little intangible, sir," Thomson confessed, "but exceedingly
important. Without any direct evidence, I have come to the conclusion that
Captain Granet is a mysterious person and needs watching. As usual, we are in
trouble with the civil authorities, and, to be frank with you, I am trying to
strengthen my case."

The General shrugged his shoulders.

"Very well," he decided, "under the circumstances you have the right to know
what my message meant. We sent Granet back because of a suspicion which may
be altogether unjustifiable. The suspicion was there, however, and it was
sufficiently strong for me to make up my mind that I should prefer not to have
him back again. Now you shall know the facts very briefly. Granet was taken
prisoner twice. No one saw him taken--as a matter of fact, both of the
affairs were night attacks. He seemed suddenly to disappear--got too far
ahead of his men, was his explanation. All I can say is that he was luckier
than most of them. Anything wandering about loose in a British uniform--but
there, I won't go on with that. He came back each time with information as to
what he had seen. Each time we planned an attack on the strength of that
information. Each time that information proved to be misleading and our
attack failed, costing us heavy losses. Of course, dispositions might have
been changed since his observations were made, but there the fact remains.
Further," the General continued, filling his pipe slowly and pressing in the
tobacco, "on the second occasion we had four hundred men thrown forward into
the village of Ossray. They were moved in the pitch darkness, and silently.
It was impossible for any word of their presence in Ossray to have been known
to the Germans. Yet the night of Granet's capture the village was shelled,
and those who escaped were cut off and made prisoners. Follow me, Major?"

"Yes, sir!" Thomson acquiesced.

"Those are just the facts," the General concluded. "Now on the other hand,
Granet has handled his men well, shown great personal bravery, and has all the
appearance of a keen soldier. I hate to do him a wrong even in my thoughts
but there were others besides myself to whom these coincidences seemed
amazing. We simply decided that they'd better give Granet a billet at home.
That's the reason of my message."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," Thomson said slowly. "You have given me
exactly the information which we desire."

The General was called away for a moment to give some instructions to the
young officer who was sitting in a distant corner of the room with a telephone
band around his head. He signed to Thomson, however, to remain.

"Now that I have gratified your curiosity," he said, when he returned,
"perhaps you will gratify mine? Will you tell me just how you over in England
have come to have suspicions of this man?"

"That," Thomson explained, "is almost a personal matter with me. Three months
ago I spent the night with the Third Army Corps up by Niemen. I was there on
other business, as you may imagine, but there was some hot fighting and I went
out to help. I was attending to some of our fellows and got very near to the
German lines. I became separated from the others a little and was groping
about when I heard voices talking German within a few feet of me. I couldn't
hear what they said but I could just distinguish two figures. One of them
made off towards the German lines. The other, after standing still for a
moment, came in my direction. I took out my revolver, and to tell you the
truth I very nearly fired on sight, for it would have been an exceedingly
awkward matter for me to have been taken prisoner just then. Just as my
finger was on the trigger, I became conscious that the man who was approaching
was humming 'Tipperary.'  I flashed my light on his face and saw at once that
he was a British officer. He addressed me quickly in German. I answered him
in English. I fancied for a moment that he seemed annoyed. 'We'd better get
out of this,' he whispered. 'We're within a hundred yards of the German
trenches and they are bringing searchlights up.'  'Who were you talking to
just now?' I asked, as we stole along. 'No one at all,' he answered. I
didn't take the thing seriously for the moment, although it seemed to me
queer. Afterwards I regretted, however, that I hadn't set myself to discover
the meaning of what was apparently a deliberate lie. The next time I met
Granet was at a luncheon party at the Ritz, a few days ago. I recognised his
face at once, although I had only seen it by the flash of my electric lamp.
From that moment I have had my suspicions."

The General nodded. He was looking a little grave.

"It's a hateful thing to believe," he said, "that any one wearing his
Majesty's uniform could ever play such a dastardly part. However, on the
whole I am rather glad that I passed in that request to the War Office.
Anything more we can do for you, Major?"

Thomson took the hint and departed. A few minutes later he was in his car and
on his way back to Boulogne.

CHAPTER XI

Olive Moreton gave a little start as the long, grey, racing car came
noiselessly to a standstill by the side of the kerbstone. Captain Granet
raised his hat and leaned from the driving seat towards her.

"Hope I didn't frighten you, Miss Moreton?"

"Not at all," she replied. "What a perfectly lovely car!"

He assented eagerly.

"Isn't she! My uncle's present to me to pass away the time until I can do
some more soldiering. They only brought it round to me early this morning.
Can I take you anywhere?"

"I was just going to see Geraldine Conyers," she began.

"Do you know, I guessed that," he remarked, leaning on one side and opening
the door. "Do let me take you. I haven't had a passenger yet."

She stepped in at once.

"As a matter of fact," she told him, "I was looking for a taxicab. I have had
a telegram from Ralph. He wants us to go down to Portsmouth by the first
train we can catch this morning. He says that if we can get down there in
time to have lunch at two o'clock, he can show us over the 'Scorpion.'  After
to-day she will be closed to visitors, even his own relations. I was just
going to see if Geraldine could come."

Granet was thoughtful for a moment. He glanced at the little clock on the
dashboard opposite to him.

"I tell you what," he suggested, "why not let me motor you and Miss Conyers
down? I don't believe there's another fast train before one o'clock, and we'd
get down in a couple of hours, easily. It's just what I'm longing for, a good
stretch into the country."

"I should love it," the girl exclaimed, "and I should think Geraldine would.
Will you wait while I run in and see her?"

"Of course," Granet replied. "Here we are, and there's Miss Conyers at the
window. You go in and talk her over and I'll just see that we've got lots of
petrol. I'll have you down there within two hours, all right, if we can get
away before the roads are crowded."

She hurried into the house. Geraldine met her on the threshold and they
talked together for a few moments. Then Olive reappeared, her face beaming.

"Geraldine would simply love it," she announced. "She will be here in five
minutes. Could we just stop at my house for a motor-coat?"

"Certainly!" Granet agreed, glancing at his watch. "This is absolutely
ripping! We shall be down there by one o'clock. Why is this to be Conyers'
last day for entertaining?"

"I don't know," she answered indifferently. "Some Admiralty regulation, I
suppose."

He sighed.

"After all," he declared, "I am not sure whether I chose the right profession.
There is so much that is mysterious about the Navy. They are always inventing
something or trying something new."

Geraldine came down the steps, waving her hand.

"This is the most delightful idea!" she exclaimed, as Granet held the door
open. "Do you really mean that you are going to take us down to Portsmouth
and come and see Ralph?"

"I am not going to worry your brother," he answered, smiling, "but I am going
to take you down to Portsmouth, if I may. We shall be there long before you
could get there by train, and--well, what do you think of my new toy?"

"Simply wonderful," Geraldine declared. "Olive told me that your uncle had
just given it you. What a lucky person you are, Captain Granet!"

He laughed a little shortly as they glided off.

"Do you think so?" he answered. "Well, I am lucky in my uncle, at any rate.
He is one of those few people who have a great deal of money and don't mind
spending it. I was getting bored to death with my game leg and arm, and
certainly this makes one forget both of them. Six cylinders, you see, Miss
Conyers, and I wouldn't like to tell you what we can touch if we were
pressed."

"You won't frighten us," Geraldine assured him.

Granet glanced once more at the clock in front of him.

"For a time," he remarked, "I am your chauffeur. I just want to see what
she'll do--to experiment a little."

>From that point conversation became scanty. The girls leaned back in their
seats. Granet sat bolt upright, with his eyes fixed upon the road. Shortly
before one o'clock they entered Portsmouth.

"The most wonderful ride I ever had in my life!" Geraldine exclaimed.

"Marvelous!" Olive echoed. "Captain Granet, Ralph promised that there should
be a pinnace at number seven dock from one until three."

Granet pointed with his finger.

"Number seven dock is there," he said, "and there's the pinnace. I shall go
back to the hotel for lunch and wait for you there."

"You will do nothing of the sort," Geraldine insisted. "Ralph would be
furious if you didn't come with us."

"Of course!" Olive interposed. "How could you think of anything so
ridiculous! It's entirely owing to you that we were able to get here."

Captain Granet looked for a moment doubtful.

"You see, just now," he explained, "I know the regulations for visiting ships
in commission are very strict. Perhaps an extra visitor might embarrass your
brother."

"How can you be so absurd!" Geraldine protested. "You--a soldier! Why, of
course he'd be delighted to have you."

Granet swung the car around into the archway of a hotel exactly opposite the
dock.

"All right," he agreed. "We'll leave the car here. Of course, I'd like to
come all right."

They crossed the cobbled street and made their way to the dock. The pinnace
was waiting for them and in a very few minutes they were on their way across
the harbour. The "Scorpion" was lying well away from other craft, her four
squat funnels emitting faint wreaths of smoke. She rode very low in the water
and her appearance was certainly menacing.

"Personally," Geraldine observed, leaning a little forward to look at her, "I
think a destroyer is one of the most vicious, the most hideous things I ever
saw. I do hope that Ralph will be quick and get a cruiser."

"Is that the Scorpion just ahead of us?" Granet asked.

Geraldine nodded.

"Did you ever see anything so ugly? She looks as though she would spit out
death from every little crevice."

"She's a fine boat," Granet muttered. "What did your brother say she could
do?"

"Thirty-nine knots," Geraldine replied. "It seems wonderful, doesn't it?"

The officer in charge of the pinnace smiled.

"Our speeds are only nominal, any way," he remarked. "If our chief engineer
there ad the proper message, there's none of us would like to say what he
could get out of those new engines."

He turned and shouted an order. In a moment or two they swung around and drew
up by the side of the vessel. Ralph waved his hand to them from the top of
the gangway.

"Well done, you people!" he exclaimed. "Hullo Granet! Have you brought the
girls down?"

"In the most wonderful racing car you ever saw!" Geraldine told him, as they
climbed up the gangway. "We shouldn't have been here for hours if we had
waited for the train."

"I met Captain Granet this morning by accident," Olive explained, as she
stepped on deck, "and he insisted on bringing us down."

"I hope I'm not in the way at all?" Granet asked anxiously. "If I am, you
have only to say the word and put me on shore, and I'll wait, with pleasure,
until the young ladies come off. I have a lot of pals down here, too, I could
look up."

"Don't be silly, Conyers replied. "Our dear old lady friend Thomson isn't
here to worry so I think we can make you free of the ship. Come along down
and try a cocktail. Mind your heads. We're not on a battleship, you know.
You will find my quarters a little cramped, I'm afraid."

They drank cocktails cheerfully, and afterwards Geraldine exclaimed, taking a
long breath. "If Olive weren't so fearfully in love, she'd be suffocated."

Granet paused and looked before him with a puzzled frown.

"What in heaven's name is this?"

Exactly opposite to them was an erection of light framework, obviously built
around some hidden object for purposes of concealment. A Marine was standing
on guard before it, with drawn cutlass. Granet was in the act of addressing
him when an officer ran lightly down the fore part of the ship, and saluted.

"Very sorry, sir," he said, "but would you mind keeping to the other side?
This deck is closed, for the present."

"What on earth have you got there?" Granet asked good-humouredly,--"that is if
it's anything a landsman may know about?"

The young officer piloted them across to the other side.

"It's just a little something we are not permitted to talk about just now," he
replied. "I didn't know the commander expected any visitors to-day or we
should have had it roped off. Anything I can show you on this deck?" he
inquired politely.

"Nothing at all, thanks," Geraldine assured him. "We'll just stroll about for
a little time."

They leaned over the rail together. The young officer saluted and withdrew.
A freshening breeze blew in their faces and the sunshine danced upon the
foam-flecked sea. The harbour was lively with small craft, an aeroplane was
circling overhead, and out in the Roads several warships were lying anchored.

"I was in luck this morning," Granet asserted.

"So were we," Geraldine replied. "I never enjoyed motoring more. Your new
car is wonderful."

"She is a beauty, isn't she?" Granet assented enthusiastically. "What she
could touch upon fourth speed I wouldn't dare to say. We were going over
sixty plenty of times this morning, and yet one scarcely noticed it. You see,
she's so beautifully hung."

"You are fortunate," she remarked, "to have an appreciative uncle."

"He is rather a brick," Granet acknowledged. "He's done me awfully well all
my life."

She nodded.

"You really are rather to be envied, aren't you, Captain Granet? You have
most of the things a man wants. You've had your opportunity, too of doing
just the finest things a man can, and you've done them."

He looked gloomily out seawards.

"I am lucky in one way," he admitted. "In others I am not so sure."

She kept her head turned from him. Somehow or other, she divined quite well
what was in his mind. She tried to think of something to say, something to
dispel the seriousness which she felt to be in the atmosphere, but words
failed her. It was he who broke the silence.

"May I ask you a question, Miss Conyers?"

A question? Why not?"

"Are you really engaged to Major Thomson?"

She did not answer him at once. She still kept her eyes resolutely turned
away from his. When at last she spoke, her voice was scarcely raised above a
whisper.

"Certainly I am," she assented.

He leaned a little closer towards her. His voice sounded to her very deep and
firm. It was the voice of a man immensely in earnest.

"I am going to be an awful rotter," he said. "I suppose I ought to take your
answer to my question as final. I won't that's all. He came along first but
that isn't everything. It's a fair fight between him and me. He hates me and
takes no pains to hide it. He hates me because I care for you--you know that.
I couldn't keep it to myself even if I would."

She drew a little away but he forced her to look at him. There was something
else besides appeal in her eyes.

"You've been the victim of a mistake," he insisted, his hand resting upon
hers. "I don't believe that you really care for him at all. He doesn't seem
the right sort for you, he's so much older and graver. You mustn't be angry.
You must forgive me, please, if I have said more than I ought--if I say more
now--because I am going to tell you, now that we are alone together for a
moment, that I love you."

She turned upon him a little indignantly, though the distress in her face was
still apparent.

"Captain Granet!" she exclaimed. "You should not say that! You have no
right--no right at all."

"On the contrary, I have every right, he answered doggedly. "It isn't as
though Thomson were my friend. He hates me and I dislike him. Every man has
a right to do his best to win the girl he cares for. It's the first time I've
felt anything of this sort. I've never wanted the big things before from any
woman. And now--"

She turned impetuously away from him. Over their head an electric message was
sparkling and crackling. She stood looking up, her hand outstretched as
though to keep him away.

"I cannot listen any more," she declared. "If you say another word I shall go
below."

He remained for a moment gloomily silent. A young officer stepped out of the
wireless room and saluted Geraldine.

"Very sorry for you people, Miss Conyers," he announced, "but I am afraid
we'll have to put you on shore. We've an urgent message here from the
flag-ship to clear off all guests."

"But we haven't had lunch yet!" Geraldine protested.

Conyers suddenly made his appearance in the gangway, followed by Olive.

"What's the message, Howard?" he inquired.

The officer saluted and handed over a folded piece of paper. Conyers read it
with a frown and stepped at once out on to the deck. He gave a few orders,
then he turned back to his guests.

"Gels," he explained, "and you, Granet, I'm frightfully sorry but I can't keep
you here another second. I have ordered the pinnace round. You must get on
shore and have lunch at the 'Ship.'  I'll come along as soon as I can.
Frightfully sorry, Granet, but I needn't apologise to you, need I? War's war,
you know and this is a matter of urgency."

"You're not going out this tide?" Geraldine demanded breathlessly.

Conyers shook his head.

"It isn't that," he replied. "We've got some engineers coming over to do some
work on deck, and I've had a private tip from my chief to clear out any guests
I may have on board."

"Is it anything to do with this wonderful screened-up thing?" Olive asked,
strolling towards the framework-covered edifice.

Conyers shrugged his shoulders.

"Can't disclose Government secrets! Between just us four--our friend Thomson
isn't here, is he?" he added, smiling,--"we are planning a little Hell for the
submarines."

They glanced curiously at the mysterious erection. Granet sighed.

"Secretive chaps, you sailors," he observed. "Never mind, I have a pal in the
Admiralty who gives me a few hints now and then. I shall go and pump him."

"Don't you breathe a word about having been board the 'Scorpion,'" Conyers
begged quickly. "They wink at it down here, so long as it's done discreetly,
but it's positively against the rules, you know."

"Righto!" Granet agreed. "There isn't a soul I'm likely to mention it to."

"I'll come over to the Ship as soon as I can get away," Conyers promised.

They raced across the mile of broken water to the landing-stage. They were
all a little silent. Olive was frankly disappointed, Geraldine was busy with
her thoughts. Granet's gaze seemed rivetted upon the "Scorpion."  Another
pinnace had drawn up alongside and a little company of men were boarding her.

"I only hope that they really have hit upon a device to rid the sea of these
cursed submarines!" he remarked, as they made their way across the dock. "I
see the brutes have taken to sinking fishing boats now."

"Ralph believes that they have got something," Olive declared eagerly. "He is
simply aching to get to work."

"Sailors are all so jolly sanguine," Granet reminded her. "They are doing
something pretty useful with nets, of course, in the way your brother was
beginning to explain to me when Major Thomson chipped in, but they could only
keep a fixed channel clear in that way. What they really need is some way of
tackling them when they are under water. Here we are at last. I hope you
girls are as hungry as I am."

They lunched in leisurely fashion, Olive in particular glancing often towards
the door, and afterwards they sat about in the lounge, drinking their coffee.
Granet had seemed to be in high spirits throughout the meal, and told the
girls many little anecdotes of his adventures at the Front. Afterwards,
however, he became silent, and finally, with a word of excuse, strolled off
alone. Olive looked once more at the clock.

"Ralph doesn't seem to be coming back, does he?" she sighed. "Let's walk a
little way down to the landing-stage."

The two girls strolled out and made their way towards the harbour. They could
see the "Scorpion" but there was no sign of any pinnace leaving her.
Reluctantly they turned back towards the hotel.

"I wonder what has become of Captain Granet?" Olive asked.

Geraldine stopped short. There was a little frown gathering upon her
forehead. She pointed up to the roof of the hotel, where a man was crouching
with a telescope glued to his eyes. He lowered it almost as they paused, and
waved his hand to them.

"Can't see any sign of Conyers," he shouted. "I'm waiting for the pinnace.
Come up here. There's such a ripping view."

They entered the hotel in silence.

"I don't believe," Geraldine remarked uneasily, "that Ralph would like that."

They made their way to the top of the house and were escorted by a buxom
chambermaid to what was practically a step-ladder opening out on to a
skylight. From here they crawled on to the roof, where they found Granet
comfortably ensconced with his back to a chimney, smoking a cigarette.

"This is rather one on your brother," he chuckled.

"Where did you find the telescope?" Geraldine asked.

"I borrowed it from downstairs," he answered. "Do come and have a look. You
can see the Scorpion quite distinctly. All the officers seem to be gathered
around that mysterious structure on the upper deck. I thought at first it was
a stand for a gun but it isn't."

Olive held out her hand for the telescope but Geraldine shook her head. There
was a troubled expression in her eyes.

"I suppose it's awfully silly, Captain Granet," she said, "but honestly, I
don't think Ralph would take it as a joke at all if he knew that we were up
here, trying to find out what was going on."

Olive set down the telescope promptly.

"I didn't think of that," she murmured.

Granet laughed easily.

"Perhaps you are right," he admitted. "All the same, we are a little
exceptionally placed, aren't we?--his sister, his fiancee, and--"

He broke off suddenly. A hand had been laid upon his shoulder. A small, dark
man, who had come round the corner of the chimney unperceived, was standing
immediately behind him.

"I must trouble you all for your names and addresses, if you please," he
announced quietly.

The two girls stared at him, dumbfounded. Granet, however, remained perfectly
at his ease. He laid down the telescope and scrutinised the newcomer.

"I really don't altogether see," he remarked good humouredly, "why I should
give my name and address to a perfect stranger just because he asks for it."

The man opened his coat and displayed a badge.

"I am on Government service, sir."

"Well, I am Captain Granet, back from the Front with dispatches a few days
ago," Granet told him. "This is Miss Conyers, sister of Commander Conyers of
the 'Scorpion,' and Miss Olive Moreton, his fiancee. We are waiting for
Commander Conyers at the present moment, and we were just looking to see if
the pinnace had started. Is it against the law to use a telescope in
Portsmouth?"

The man made a few notes in his pocket-book. Then he opened the trapdoor and
stood on one side.

"No one is allowed out here, sir," he said. "The hotel people are to blame
for not having the door locked. I shall have to make a report but I have no
doubt that your explanation will be accepted. Will you be so good as to
descend, please?"

Granet struggled to his feet and turned towards his companions.

"The fellow's quite right," he decided. "I am only glad that the Government
are looking after things so. The Admiralty are much more go-ahead in this way
than we are. I vote we have out the car and go down the front to
Southsea--unless we are under arrest?" he added pleasantly, turning towards
the man who had accosted them.

"You are at liberty to do whatever you please, sir," was the polite reply.
"In any case, I think it would be quite useless of you to wait for Commander
Conyers."

"Why?" Olive asked quickly.

"The Scorpion has just received orders to leave on this evening's tide,
madam," the man announced. "You can see that she is moving even now."

They looked out across the harbour. The smoke was pouring from the funnels of
the destroyer. Already she had swung around and was steaming slowly towards
the Channel.

"She's off, right enough!"  Granet exclaimed. "Nothing left for us, then, but
London."

CHAPTER XII

Geraldine, a few hours later, set down the telephone receiver with a little
sigh of resignation. Lady Conyers glanced up inquiringly from her book.

"Was that some one wanting to come and see you at this time of night,
Geraldine?" she asked.

Geraldine yawned.

"It's Hugh," she explained. "He has rung up from the War Office or
somewhere--says he has just got back from France and wants to see me at once.
I think he might have waited till to-morrow morning. I can scarcely keep my
eyes open, I am so sleepy."

Lady Conyers glanced at the clock.

"It isn't really so late," she remarked, "and I dare say, if the poor man's
been travelling all day, he'd like to say good-night to you."

Geraldine made a little grimace.

"I shall go into the morning room and wait for him," she announced. "He'll
very likely find me asleep."

The Admiral looked up from behind the Times.

"Where's that nice young fellow Granet?" he asked. "Why didn't you bring him
in to dinner?"

"Well, we didn't get back until nearly eight," Geraldine reminded her father.
"I didn't think he'd have time to change and get back here comfortably."

"Fine young chap, that," Sir Seymour remarked. "The very best type of young
English soldier. We could do with lots like him."

Geraldine left the room without remark. She could hear her father rustling
his paper as she disappeared.

"Can't think why Geraldine didn't pick up with a smart young fellow like
Granet instead of an old stick like Thomson," he grumbled. "I hate these Army
Medicals, anyway."

"Major Thomson has a charming disposition," Lady Conyers declared warmly.
"Besides, he will be very well off some day--he may even get the baronetcy."

"Who cares about that?" her husband grunted. "Gerald has all the family shee
needs, and all the money. How she came to choose Thomson from all her
sweethearts, I can't imagine."

Geraldine, notwithstanding her fatigue, welcomed her lover very charmingly
when he arrived, a few minutes later. Major Thomson was still in travelling
clothes, and had the air of a man who had been working at high pressure for
some time. He held her fingers tightly for a moment, without speaking. Then
he led her to the sofa and seated himself beside her.

"Geraldine," he began gravely, "has what I say any weight with you at all?"

"A good deal," she assured him.

"You know that I do not like Captain Granet, yet you took him with you down to
Portsmouth today and even allowed him to accompany you on board the Scorpion."

Geraldine started a little.

"How do you know that already?" she asked curiously.

He shook his head impatiently.

"It doesn't matter. I heard. Why did you do it, Geraldine?"

"In the first place, because he offered to motor us down after we had missed
the train. There are heaps of other reasons."

"As, for instance?"

"Well, Olive and I preferred having an escort and Captain Granet was a most
agreeable one. He took us down in a car his uncle has just given him--a sixty
horse-power Panhard. I never enjoyed motoring more in my life."

"You are all very foolish," Thomson said slowly. "I am going to tell you
something now, dear, which you may not believe, but it is for your good, and
it is necessary for me to have some excuse for the request I am going to make.
Granet is under suspicion at the War Office."

"Under suspicion?" Geraldine repeated blankly.

"Nothing has been proved against him," Thomson continued, "and I tell you
frankly that in certain quarters the idea is scouted as absurd. On the other
hand, he is under observation as being a possible German spy."

Geraldine for a moment sat quite still. Then she broke into a peal of
laughter. She sat up, a moment later, wiping her eyes.

"Are you really serious, Hugh?" she demanded.

"Absolutely," he assured her, a little coldly.

She wiped her eyes once more.

"Hugh, dear," she sighed, patting his hand, "you do so much better looking
after your hospitals and your wounded than unearthing mare's-nests like this.
I don't think that you'd be a brilliant success in the Intelligence
Department. As to the War Office, well, you know what I think of them.
Captain Granet a German spy, indeed!"

"Neither the War Office nor I myself," Thomson continued, "have arrived at
these suspicions without some reason. Perhaps you will look at the matter a
little more seriously when I tell you that Captain Granet will not be allowed
to return to the Front."

"Not be allowed?" she repeated. "Hugh, you are not serious!"

"I have never been more serious in my life," he insisted. "I am not in a
position to tell you more than the bare facts or I might disclose some
evidence which even you would have to admit throws a rather peculiar light
upon some of this young man's actions. As it is, however, I can do no more
than warn you, and beg you," he went on, "to yield to my wishes in the matter
of your further acquaintance with him."

There was a moment's rather curious silence. Geraldine seemed to be gazing
through the walls of the room. Her hands were clenched in one another, her
fingers nervously interlocked.

"I shall send for him to come and see me the first thing to-morrow morning,"
she decided.

"You will do nothing of the sort," Thomson objected firmly.

She turned her head and looked at him. He was conscious of the antagonism
which had sprung up like a wall between them. His face, however, showed no
sign.

"How do you propose to prevent me?" she asked, with ominous calm.

"By reminding you of your duty to your country," he answered. "Geraldine,
dear, I did not expect to have to talk to you like this. When I tell you that
responsible people in the War Office, officials whose profession it is to
scent out treachery, have declared this young man suspect, I am certainly
disappointed to find you embracing his cause so fervently. It is no personal
matter. Believe, me," he added, after a moment's pause, "whatever my personal
bias may be, what I am saying to you now is not actuated in the slightest by
any feelings of jealousy. I have told you what I know and it is for you to
make your choice as to how much or how little in the future you will see of
this young man. But I do forbid you, not in my own name but for our country's
sake to breathe a single word to him of what I have said to you."

"It comes to this, then," she said, "that you make accusations against a man
and deny him the right of being heard?"

"If you choose to put it like that, yes," he assented. "Only I fancied that
considering--considering the things between us, you might have taken my word."

He leaned a little towards her. If she had been looking she could scarcely
have failed to have been touched by the sudden softness of his dark eyes, the
little note of appeal in his usually immobile face. Her eyes, however, were
fixed upon the diamond ring which sparkled upon her third finger. Slowly she
drew it off and handed it to him.

"Hugh," she said, "the things you speak of do not exist any more between us.
I am sorry, but I think you are narrow and suspicious. You have your own work
to do. It seems to me mean to spend your time suspecting soldiers who have
fought for their king and their country, of such a despicable crime."

"Can't you trust me a little more than that, Geraldine?" he asked wistfully.

"In what way?" she demanded. "I judge only by the facts, the things you have
said to me, your accusations against Captain Granet. Why should you go out of
your way to investigate cases of suspected espionage?"

"You cannot believe that I would do so unless I was convinced that it was my
duty?"

"I cannot see that it is your business at all," she told him shortly.

He rose from his place.

"I am very sorry, Geraldine," he said. "I will keep this ring. You are quite
free. But--look at me."

Against her will she was forced to do as he bade her. Her own attitude, which
had appeared to her so dignified and right, seemed suddenly weakened. She had
the feeling of a peevish child.

"Geraldine," he begged, "take at least the advice of a man who loves you.
Wait."

Even when he had opened the door she felt a sudden inclination to call him
back. She heard him go down the hall, heard the front door open and close.
She sat and looked in a dazed sort of way at the empty space upon her finger.
Then she rose and went into the drawing-room, where her father and mother were
still reading. She held out her hand.

"Mother," she announced, "I am not engaged to Major Thomson any more."

The Admiral laid down his newspaper.

"Damned good job, too!" he declared. "That young fellow Granet's worth a
dozen of him. Never could stick an Army Medical. Well, well! How did he
take it?"

Lady Conyers watched her daughter searchingly. Then she shook her head.

"I hope you have done wisely, dear," she said.

CHAPTER XIII

At a little after noon on the following day Captain Granet descended from a
taxicab in the courtyard of the Milan Hotel, and, passing through the swing
doors, made his way to the inquiry office. A suave, black-coated young clerk
hastened to the desk.

"Can you tell me," Granet inquired, "whether a gentlemen named Guillot is
staying here?"

The young man bowed.

"Monsieur Guillot arrived last night, sir," he announced. "He has just rung
down to say that if a gentlemen called to see him he could be shown up. Here,
page," he went on, turning to a diminutive youth in the background, "show this
gentleman to number 322."

Granet followed the boy to the lift and was conducted to a room on the third
floor. The door was opened by a tall, white-haired Frenchman.

"Monsieur Guillot?" Captain Granet inquired pleasantly. "My name is Granet."

The Frenchman ushered him in. The door was closed and carefully locked. Then
Monsieur Guillot swung around and looked at his visitor with some curiosity.
Granet was still wearing his uniform.

"France must live," Granet murmured.

The Frenchman at once extended his hand.

"My friend," he confessed, "for a moment I was surprised. It did not occur to
me to see you in this guise."

Granet smiled.

"I have been out at the Front," he explained, "and am home wounded."

"But an English officer?" Monsieur Guillot remarked dubiously. "I do not
quite understand, then. The nature of the communication which I have come to
receive is known to you?"

Granet nodded and accepted the chair which his host had offered.

"I do not think that you should be so much surprised," he said simply. "If
the war is grievous for your country, it is ruin to mine. We do not, perhaps,
advertise our apprehensions in the papers. We prefer to keep them locked up
in our own brain. There is one great fact always before us. Germany is
unconquerable. One must find peace or perish."

Monsieur Guillot listened with a curious look upon his face. His forefinger
tapped the copy of the Times which was lying upon the table. The other nodded
gravely.

"Yes," he continued, "I know that our Press is carrying on a magnificent
campaign of bluff. I know that many of the ignorant people of the country
believe that this war is still being prosecuted with every hope of success.
We who have been to the Front, especially those who have any source of
information in Germany, know differently. The longer the war, the more
ruinous the burden which your country and mine will have to bear."

"It is my opinion also," Monsieur Guillot declared, "and furthermore, listen.
It is not our war at all, that is the cruel part of it. It is Russia's war
and yours. Yet it is we who suffer most, we, the richest part of whose
country is in the hands of the foe, we whose industries are paralysed, my
country from whom the life-blood is being slowly drained. You English, what
do you know of the war? No enemy has set foot upon your soil, no Englishman
has seen his womankind dishonoured or his home crumble into ashes. The war to
you is a thing of paper, an abstraction--that same war which has turned the
better half of my beloved country into a lurid corner of hell."

"Our time has not yet come," Granet admitted, "but before long, unless
diplomacy can avert it, fate will be knocking at our doors, too. Listen. You
have friends still in power, Monsieur Guillot?--friends in the Cabinet, is it
not so?"

"It is indeed true," Monsieur Guillot assented.

"You have, too," Granet continued, "a great following throughout France. You
are the man for the task I bring to you. You, if you choose, shall save your
country and earn the reward she will surely bestow upon you."

Monsieur Guillot's cheeks were flushed a little. With long, nervous fingers
he rolled a cigarette and lit it.

"Monsieur," he said, "I listen to you eagerly, and yet I am puzzled. You wear
the uniform of an English officer, but you come to me, is it not so, as an
emissary of Germany?"

"In bald words that may be true," Granet confessed, "yet I would remind you of
two things. First, that the more dominant part of the personality which I
have inherited comes to me from Alsatian ancestors; and secondly, that this
peace for which I am striving may in the end mean salvation for England, too."

"I hear you with relief," Monsieur Guillot admitted. "In this transaction it
is my great desire to deal with a man of honour. As such I know perceive that
I can recognise you, monsieur."

Granet bowed gravely and without any shadow of embarrassment.

"That assuredly, Monsieur Guillot," he said. "Shall I proceed?"

"By all means."

Granet drew a thin packet from the breast pocket of his coat. He laid it on
the table between them.

"I received this," he announced, "less than three weeks ago from the hands of
the Kaiser himself."

Monsieur Guillot gazed at his companion incredulously.

"It was very simple," Granet continued. "I was taken prisoner near the
village of Ossray. I was conducted at once to headquarters and taken by
motor-car to a certain fortified place which I will not specify, but which was
at that time the headquarters of the German Staff. I received this document
there in the way I have told you. I was then assisted, after some very
remarkable adventures, to rejoin my regiment. You can open that document,
Monsieur Guillot. It is addressed to you. Guard it carefully, though, for it
is signed by the Kaiser himself. I have carried it with me now for more than
a fortnight in the inner sole of my shoe. As you can imagine, its discovery
upon my person would have meant instant death."

Monsieur Guillot was engrossed in reading the few lines of the missive. When
he had finished, he covered the paper with the palm of his hand and leaned
forward. There was a queer light in his eyes.

"Germany will give up Alsace and Lorraine," he said hoarsely, "and will retire
within her own frontiers. She will ask for no indemnity. What is the meaning
of it?"

"Simple enough," Granet pointed out. "A great politician like you should
easily realise the actual conditions which prompt such an offer. What good is
territory to Germany, territory over which she must rule by force, struggling
always against the accumulated hatred of years? Alsace and Lorraine have
taught her her lesson. It is not French territory she wants. Russia has far
more to give. Russia and England between them can pay an indemnity which will
make Germany rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Form your party, Monsieur
Guillot, spread your tidings in any way that seems fit to you, only until the
hour comes, guard that document as you would your soul. Its possession would
mean death to you as it would to me."

Monsieur Guillot took the document and buttoned it up in his inside pocket.

"Supposing I succeed," he said quietly, "what of your country then?"

"My country will make peace," Granet replied.

"It will be a peace that will cost us much, but nothing more than we deserve.
For generations the war has been the perfectly obvious and apparent sequence
of European events. It threw its warning shadow across our path for years,
and our statesmen deliberately turned their heads the other way or walked
blindfolded. Not only our statesmen, mind, but our people, our English
people. Our young men shirked their duty, our philosophers and essayists
shirked theirs. We prated of peace and conventions, and we knew very well
that we were living in times when human nature and red blood were still the
controlling elements. We watched Germany arm and prepare. We turned for
comfort towards our fellow sinners, America, and we prattled about conventions
and arbitration, and hundred other silly abstractions. A father can watch the
punishment of his child, Monsieur Guillot. Believe me, there are many other
Englishmen besides me who will fell a melancholy satisfaction in the
chastisement of their country, many who are more English, even, than I."

Monsieur Guillot passed away from the personal side of the matter. Already
his mind was travelling swiftly along the avenues of his own future greatness.

"This is the chance which comes to few men," he muttered. "There is Dejane,
Gardine, Debonnot, Senn, besides my own followers. My own journal, too! It
is a great campaign, this which I shall start."

Granet rose to his feet.

"After to-day I breathe more freely," he confessed. "There have been enemies
pressing closely around me, I have walked in fear. To-day I am a free man.
Take care, monsieur. Take care especially whilst you are in England."

Monsieur Guillot extended his hand.

"My young friend," he said, "in the years to come you and I shall perhaps meet
in our wonderful Paris, and if I may not tell the world so, I shall yet feel,
as we look upon her greatness, that you and I together have saved France.
Adieu!"

Granet made his way along the empty corridor, rang for the lift and descended
into the hall. A smile was upon his lips. The torch at last was kindled! In
the hall of the hotel he came across a group of assembling guests just
starting for the luncheon room. A tall, familiar figure stepped for a moment
on one side. His heart gave a little jump. Geraldine held out her
pearl-gloved hand.

"Captain Granet," she said, "I wanted to tell you something."

"Yes?" he answered breathlessly.

She glanced towards where the little group of people were already on their way
to the stairs.

"I must not stay for a second, she continued, dropping her voice, "but I
wanted to tell you--I am no longer engaged to Major Thomson. Goodbye!"

A rush of words trembled upon his lips but she was gone. He watched her slim,
graceful figure as she passed swiftly along the vestibule and joined her
friends. He even heard her little laugh as she greeted one of the men who had
waited for her.

"Decidedly," Granet said to himself triumphantly as he turned towards the
door, "this is my day!"

CHAPTER XIV

Monsieur Guillot was a man of emotional temperament. For more than an hour
after Granet had left him, he paced up and down his little room, stood before
the high windows which overlooked the Thames, raised his hands above his head
and gazed with flashing eyes into the future--such a future! All his life he
had been a schemer, his eyes turned towards the big things, yet with himself
always occupying the one glorified place in the centre of the arena. He was,
in one sense of the word, a patriot, but it was the meanest and smallest
sense. There was no great France for him in which his was not the commanding
figure. In every dream of that wonderful future, of a more splendid and
triumphant France, he saw himself on the pinnacle of fame, himself acclaimed
by millions the strong great man, the liberator. France outside himself lived
only as a phantasy. And now at last his chance had come. The minutes passed
unnoticed as he built his way up into the future. He was shrewd and
calculating, he took note of the pitfalls he must avoid. One by one he
decided upon the men whom gradually and cautiously he would draw into his
confidence. Finally he saw the whole scheme complete, the bomb-shell thrown,
France hysterically casting laurels upon the man who had brought her
unexpected peace.

The door-bell rang. He answered it a little impatiently. A slim, fashionably
dressed young Frenchman stood there, whose face was vaguely familiar to him.

"Monsieur Guillot?" the newcomer inquired politely.

Guillot bowed. The young man handed him a card.

"I am the Baron D'Evignon," he announced, "second secretary at the Embassy
here."

Monsieur Guillot held the card and looked at his visitor. He was very
puzzled. Some dim sense of foreboding was beginning to steal in upon him.

"Be so kind as to come in, Monsieur le Baron," he invited. "Will you not be
seated and explain to me to what I am indebted for this honour? You do not,
by any chance, mistake me for another? I am Monsieur Guillot, lately, alas!
Of Lille."

The Baron smiled ever so slightly as he waved away the chair.

"There is no mistake, Monsieur Guillot," he said. "I come to you with a
message from my Chief. He would be greatly honoured if you would accompany me
to the Embassy. He wishes a few minutes' conversation with you."

"With me?" Monsieur Guillot echoed incredulously. "But there is some
mistake."

"No mistake, I assure you," the young man insisted.

Monsieur Guillot drew back a little into the room.

"But what have I to do with the Ambassador, or with diplomatic matters of any
sort?" he protested. "I am here on business, to see what can be saved from
the wreck of my affairs. Monsieur the Ambassador is mistaking me for
another."

The Baron shook his head.

"There is no mistake, my dear sir," he insisted. "We all recognise," he
added, with a bow, "the necessities which force the most famous of us to live
sometimes in the shadow of anonymity. If the Chief could find little to say
to Monsieur Guillot of Lille, he will, I am sure, be very interested in a
short conversation with Monsieur Henri Pailleton."

There was a brief, tense silence. The man who had called him self Guillot was
transformed. The dreams which had uplifted him a few minutes ago, had passed.
He was living very much in the present--an ugly and foreboding present. The
veins stood out upon his forehead and upon the back of his hands, his teeth
gleamed underneath his coarse, white moustache. Then he recovered himself.

"There is some mistake," he said, "but I will come."

In silence they left the hotel and drove to the Embassy, in silence the young
man ushered his charge into the large, pleasant apartment on the ground floor
of the Embassy, where the ambassador was giving instructions to two of his
secretaries. He dismissed them with a little wave of his hand and bowed
politely to his visitor. There was no longer any pretext on the part of
Monsieur Guillot. He recognised its complete futility.

"Monsieur Pailleton," the ambassador began, "will you take a seat? It is very
kind of you to obey so quickly my summons."

"I had no idea," the latter remarked, "that my presence in England was known.
I am here on private business."

The ambassador bowed suavely.

"Precisely, my friend! You see, I use the epithet 'my friend' because at a
time like this all Frenchmen must forget their differences and work together
for the good and honour of their country. Is it not so, monsieur?"

"That is indeed true," Monsieur Pailleton admitted slowly. "We may work in
different ways but we work towards the same end."

"No one has ever doubted your patriotism, Monsieur Pailleton," the ambassador
continued. "It is my privilege now to put it to the test. There is a little
misunderstanding in Brazil, every particular concerning which, and the views
of our Government, is contained in the little parcel of documents which you
see upon this table. Put them in your pocket, Monsieur Pailleton. I am going
to ask you to serve your country by leaving for Liverpool this afternoon and
for Brazil to-morrow on the steamship Hermes."

Monsieur Pailleton had been a little taken aback by the visit of the Baron.
He sat now like a man temporarily stupefied. He was too amazed to find any
sinister significance in this mission. He could only gasp. The ambassador's
voice, as he continued talking smoothly, seemed to reach him from a long way
off.

"It may be a little contrary to your wishes, my friend," the latter proceeded,
"to find yourself so far from the throb of our great struggle, yet in these
days we serve best who obey. It is the wish of those who stand for France
that you should take that packet and board that steamer."

Monsieur Pailleton began in some measure to recover himself. He was still,
however, bewildered.

"Monsieur," he protested, "I do not understand. This mission to Brazil of
which you speak--it can have no great importance. Cannot it be entrusted to
some other messenger?"

"Alas! No, my dear sir," was the uncompromising reply. "It is you--Monsieur
Pailleton--whom the President desires to travel to Brazil."

The light was breaking in upon Pailleton. He clenched his fists.

"I am to be got out of the way!" he exclaimed. "The President fears me
politically, he fears my following!"

The ambassador drew himself a little more upright, a stiff unbending figure.
His words seemed suddenly to become charged with more weight.

"Monsieur Pailleton," he said, "the only thing that France fears is
treachery!"

Pailleton gripped at the back of his chair. The room for a moment swam before
his eyes.

"Is this an insult, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur?" he demanded.

"Take it as an insult if in your heart there is no shadow of treachery towards
the France that is today, towards the cause of the Allies as it is to-day,"
was the stern answer.

"I refuse to accept this extraordinary mission," Pailleton declared, rising to
his feet. "You can send whom you will to Brazil. I have greater affairs
before me."

The ambassador shrugged his shoulders.

"I shall not press you," he said. "I shall only put before you the
alternative. You are at this present moment upon French soil. If you refuse
this mission which has been offered to you, I shall detain you here until I
have the means of sending you under escort to France."

"Detain me? On what charge?" Pailleton exclaimed angrily.

"On the charge of treason," was the quiet reply. "I shall have you stripped
and searched in this room. I shall have your luggage and your room searched
at the Milan Hotel. And now, Monsieur Pailleton?"

Once more the man was bewildered. This time, however, it was bewilderment of
a different sort. He thought for a moment steadfastly. Who was there who
could have betrayed him?

"What is the nature of this document, monsieur, which you expect to find
amongst my belongings?" he demanded.

"An authorised offer of peace from Germany to the French people," the
ambassador answered slowly. "It is the second attempt which has been made.
The first was torn into fragments before the face of the person who had the
effrontery to present it. The second, Monsieur Pailleton, is in your
possession. You may keep it if you will. In Brazil you will find it of
little use."

Monsieur Pailleton folded his arms.

"I am a Frenchman," he proclaimed. "What I may do, I do for France."

"You refuse my mission, then?"

"I refuse it."

The ambassador struck a bell upon his table. One of his secretaries promptly
appeared.

"Send Colonel Defarge to me at once," his chief ordered.

There was a brief pause. The ambassador was busy writing at his table.
Pailleton, who was breathing heavily, said nothing. Presently an officer in
French uniform entered.

"Monsieur le Colonel," the ambassador said, stretching out his hand towards
Pailleton, "you will accept the charge of this man, whom you will consider
under arrest. I take the full responsibility for this proceeding. You will
conduct him to your rooms here and you will search him. Any document found in
his possession you will bring to me. When you have finished, let me know and
I will give you an authority to proceed to his apartments in the Milan Hotel.
You understand?"

"Certainly, my chief."

The officer saluted and moved to Pailleton.

"You will come quietly, monsieur, is it not so?" he asked.

Pailleton waved him away. He turned to the ambassador.

"Monsieur," he decided, "I will go to Brazil."

CHAPTER XV

TWO MORE GERMAN SUBMARINES SUNK WITH ALL HANDS

The Admiralty report that they received last night a message from Commander
Conyers of the destroyer "Scorpion," announcing that he has destroyed German
submarines U 22 and 27, with all hands.

"Well, I'm damned!" the Admiral exclaimed, as he laid down the newspaper a few
mornings later. "Ralph's done it this time, and no mistake."

Geraldine looked over his shoulder, her cheeks aglow.

"I knew at seven o'clock," she declared. "Harris brought me the paper up.
They are all so excited about it in the kitchen. You'd just gone out in the
Park."

"I want to know how it was done," the Admiral speculated. "Can't have been
ramming if he bagged two of them, and they surely never came to the surface
voluntarily, with a destroyer about."

Geraldine glanced around the room to be sure that they were alone.

"Don't you remember when Olive and I were at Portsmouth?" she said. "Ralph
has been absolutely dumb about it but he did just give us a hint that he had a
little surprise in store for the submarines. There was something on deck,
covered all up and watched by a sentry, and just before we sat down to lunch,
you know, we were turned off and had to go to the Ship. Ralph wouldn't tell
us a word about it but I'm sure he's got some new contrivance on the Scorpion
for fighting the submarines."

"There may be something in it," the Admiral admitted cheerfully. "I noticed
the Morning Post naval man the other day made a very guarded reference to some
secret means of dealing with these vermin."

Lady Conyers sailed into the room, a telegram in her hand.

"A wireless from Ralph," she announced. "Listen."

Have sunk two of the brutes. More to come. Love.
                               Ralph.

They pored over the telegram and the newspaper until the breakfast was cold.
The Admiral was like a boy again.

"If we can get rid of these curses of the sea," he said, settling down at last
to his bacon and eggs, "and get those Germans to come out, the war will be
over months before any one expected. I shall go down to the Admiralty after
breakfast and see if they've got anything to tell. Ralph gave me a hint about
the net scheme but he never even mentioned anything else."

The telephone rang in the next room and a servant summoned Geraldine.

Captain Granet wishes to speak to Miss Conyers," he announced.

Geraldine left her place at once and hastened into the library. She took up
the receiver.

"Is that you, Captain Granet?" she asked.

"I felt that I must ring you up," he declared, "to congratulate you, Miss
Conyers, upon your brother's exploit. I have had half a dozen soldier fellows
in already this morning to talk about it, and we're simply mad with curiosity.
Do you think we shall be told soon how it was done?"

"Father's going down to the Admiralty to try and find out," Geraldine replied.
"Ralph doesn't say a word except that he sunk them. We've had a wireless from
him this morning."

"It really doesn't matter much, does it," Granet went on, "so long as we get
rid of the brutes. I was perfectly certain, when we were down at Portsmouth,
that your brother had something up his sleeve. Does give one a thrill,
doesn't it, when one's ashore and doing nothing, to read of things like this?"

"You'll soon be at work again," she told him encouragingly.

"I don't know," he sighed. "They talk about giving me a home job and I don't
think I could stick it. Are you walking in the Park this morning, Miss
Conyers?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"No, I am playing golf at Ranelagh."

Might I call this afternoon?"

"If you like," she assented. "After four o'clock, though, because I am
staying out to lunch."

"Thank you so much," he replied gratefully.

She set down the receiver again and went back to the breakfast-room.

"Captain Granet just wanted to congratulate us all," she announced, "and to
know if he could come in to tea this afternoon."

"Better ask him to dinner, my dear," the Admiral suggested hospitably. "He's
a fine young fellow, Granet. Very thoughtful of him to ring us up."

Lady Conyers made no comment. Geraldine was bending over her plate. The
Admiral rose to his feet. He was much too  excited to pursue the
conversation.

"I shall walk down to the Admiralty and see if I can get hold of old Wilcock,"
he continued. "If he won't tell me anything, I'll wring the old beggar's
neck."

The Admiral left the house a few minutes later and Lady Conyers walked arm in
arm with her daughter into the pleasant little morning-room which looked out
upon the Square. The former paused for a moment to look at Thomson's
photograph, which stood upon one of the side tables. Then she closed the
door.

"Geraldine," she said, "I am not very happy about you and Hugh."

"Why not, mother?" the girl asked, looking out of the window.

"Perhaps because I like Hugh," Lady Conyers went on quietly, "perhaps, too,
because I am not sure that you have done wisely. You haven't given me any
reason yet, have you, for breaking your engagement?"

Geraldine was silent for a moment. Then she came back and sat on the rug at
her mother's feet. She kept her face, however, a little turned away.

"It's so hard to put it into words, mother," she said thoughtfully, "only Hugh
never seemed to give me any of his confidence. Of course, his is very dull
work, looking after hospitals and that sort of thing, but still, I'd have
liked to try and take an interest in it. He must have seen exciting things in
France, but it is only by the merest chance that one ever realises that he has
been even near the Front. He is so silent, so secretive."

Lady Conyers took up her knitting.

"Some men are like that, dear," she remarked. "It is just temperamental.
Perhaps you haven't encouraged him to talk."

"But I have," Geraldine insisted. "I have asked him no end of questions, but
before he has answered any of them properly, I find him trying to change the
conversation.""

"Men don't like talking about the war, you know," Lady Conyers went on.
"There was that nice Major Tyndale who was back from the Front the other day
with a V. C. and goodness knows what. Not a word would he say about any one
of the fights, and he is cheery enough in a general way, isn't he, and fond of
talking?"

"Even then," Geraldine protested, "Hugh's work is different. I can understand
why he doesn't like to talk a lot about the wounded and that sort of thing,
but he must have had some interesting adventures.""
"I don't think," Lady Conyers said, "the very nicest men talk about their
adventures."

Geraldine made a little grimace.

"Hugh doesn't talk about anything," she complained. "He goes about looking as
though he had the cares of the world upon his shoulders, and then he has
the--well, the cheek, I call it, to lecture me about Captain Granet. He does
talk about Captain Granet in the most absurd manner, you know, mother."

"He may have his reasons," Lady Conyers observed.

Geraldine turned her head and looked at her mother.

"Now what reasons could he have for not liking Captain Granet and suspecting
him of all manner of ridiculous things?" she asked. "Did you ever know a more
harmless, ingenuous, delightful young man in your life?"

"Perhaps it is because you find him all these things," Lady Conyers suggested,
"that Hugh doesn't like him."

"Of course, if he is going to be jealous about nothing at all--"

"Is it nothing at all?"

Lady Conyers raised her head from her knitting and looked across at her
daughter. A little flush of colour had suddenly streamed into Geraldine's
face. She drew back as though she had been sitting too near the fire.

"Of course it is," she declared. "I have only known Captain Granet for a very
short time. I like him, of course--every one must like him who knows him--but
that's all.

"Do you know," Lady Conyers said, a moment later, "I almost hope that it is
all."

"And why, mother?"

"Because I consider Hugh is a great judge of character. Because we have known
Hugh since he was a boy, and we have known Captain Granet for about a week."

Geraldine rose to her feet.

"You don't like Captain Granet, mother."

"I do not dislike him," Lady Conyers replied thoughtfully. "I do not see how
any one could."

"Hugh does. He hinted things about him--that he wasn't honest--and then
forbade me to tell him. I think Hugh was mean."

Lady Conyers glanced at the clock.

"You had better go and get ready, dear, if you have promised to be at Ranelagh
at half-past ten," she said. "Will you just remember this?"

"I'll remember anything you say, mother," Geraldine promised.

"You're just a little impulsive, dear, at times, although you seem so
thoughtful," Lady Conyers continued. "Don't rush at any conclusion about
these two men. Sometimes I have fancied that there is a great well of feeling
behind Hugh's silence. And more than that--that there is something in his
life of which just now he cannot speak, which is keeping him living in great
places. His abstractions are not ordinary ones, you know. It's just an idea
of mine, but the other day--well, something happened which I thought rather
queer. I saw a closed car turn into St. James's Park and, evidently according
to orders, the chauffeur drove very slowly. There were two men inside,
talking very earnestly. One of them was Hugh; the other was--well, the most
important man at the War Office, who seldom, as you know, speaks to any one."

"You mean to say that he was alone, talking confidentially with Hugh?"
Geraldine exclaimed incredulously.

"He was, dear," her mother assented, "and it made me think. That's all. I
have a fancy that some day when the time comes that Hugh is free to talk, he
will be able to interest you--well, quite as much as Captain Granet. . . . Now
then, dear, hurry. There's the car at the door for you and you haven't your
hat on."

Geraldine went upstairs a little thoughtfully. As she drew on her gloves, she
looked down at the empty space upon her third finger. For a moment there was
almost a lump in her throat.

CHAPTER XVI

The two men who had walked up together arm in arm from Downing Street, stood
for several moments in Pall Mall before separating. The pressman who was
passing yearned for the sunlight in his camera. One of the greatest
financiers of the city in close confabulation with Mr. Gordon Jones, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was an interesting, almost an historical sight.

"It is a source of the greatest satisfaction to me, Sir Alfred," the Minister
was saying earnestly, "to find such royal and whole-hearted support in the
city. I am afraid," he went on, with a little twinkle in his eyes, "that
there are times when I have scarcely been popular in financial circles."

"We have hated you like poison," the other assured him, with emphasis.

"The capitalists must always hate the man who tries to make wealth pay its
just share in the support of the Empire," Mr. Gordon Jones remarked. "The
more one has, the less one likes to part with it. However, those days have
passed. You bankers have made my task easier at every turn. You have met me
in every possible way. To you personally, Sir Alfred, I feel that some day I
shall have to express my thanks--my thanks and the thanks of the nation--in a
more tangible form."

"You are very kind," the banker acknowledged. "Times like this change
everything. We remember only that we are Englishmen."

The Minister hailed a passing taxi and disappeared. The banker strolled
slowly along Pall Mall and passed through the portals of an august-looking
club. The hall-porter relieved him of his coat and hat with great deference.
As he was crossing the hall, after having exchanged greetings with several
friends, he came face to face with Surgeon-Major Thomson. The latter paused.

"I am afraid you don't remember me, Sir Alfred," he said, "but I have been
hoping for an opportunity of thanking you personally for the six ambulance
cars you have endowed. I am Surgeon-Major Thomson, chief inspector of Field
Hospitals."

Sir Alfred held out his hand affably.

"I remember you perfectly, Major," he declared. "I am very glad that my gift
is acceptable. Anything one can do to lessen the suffering of those who are
fighting our battle, is almost a charge upon our means."

"It is very fortunate for us that you feel like that," the other replied.
"Thank you once more, sir."

The two men separated. Sir Alfred turned to the hall-porter.

"I am expecting my nephew in to dine," he said,--"Captain Granet. Bring him
into the smoking-room, will you, directly he arrives."

"Certainly, sir!"

Sir Alfred passed on across the marble hall. Thomson, whose hand had been
upon his hat, replaced it upon the peg. He looked after the great banker and
stood for a moment deep in thought. Then he addressed the hall-porter.

"By-the-bye, Charles," he inquired, "if you ask a non-member to dinner, you
have to dine in the strangers' room, I suppose?"

"Certainly, sir," the man replied. "It is just at the back of the general
dining-room."

"I suppose an ordinary member couldn't dine in there alone?"

"It is not customary, sir."

Surgeon-Major Thomson made his way to the telephone booth. When he emerged,
he interviewed the head-waiter.

"Keep a small table for me in the strangers' room," he ordered. "I shall
require dinner for two."

"At what time, sir?"

Major Thomson seemed for a moment deaf. He was looking through the open door
of the smoking-room to where Sir Alfred was deep in the pages of a review.

"Are there many people dining there to-night?" he asked.

"Sir Alfred has a guest at eight o'clock, sir," the man replied. "There are
several others, I think, but they have not ordered tables specially."

"At a quarter past eight, if you please. I shall be in the billiard-room,
Charles," he added, turning to the hall-porter.

Sir Alfred wearied soon of the pages of his review and leaned back in his
chair, his hands folded in front of him, gazing through the window at the
opposite side of the way. A good many people, passing backwards and forwards,
glanced at him curiously. For thirty years his had been something like a
household name in the city. He had been responsible, he and the great firm of
which he was the head, for international finance conducted on the soundest
principles, finance which scorned speculation, finance which rolled before it
the great snowball of automatically accumulated wealth. His father had been
given the baronetcy which he now enjoyed, and which, as he knew very well,
might at any moment be transferred into a peerage. He was a short, rather
thick-set man, with firm jaws and keen blue eyes, carefully dressed in
somewhat old-fashioned style, with horn-rimmed eyeglass hung about his neck
with a black ribbon. His hair was a little close-cropped and stubbly. No one
could have called him handsome, no one could have found him undistinguished.
Even without the knowledge of his millions, people who glanced at him
recognised the atmosphere of power.

"Wonder what old Anselman's thinking about," one man asked another in an
opposite corner.

"Money bags," was the prompt reply. "The man thinks money, he dreams money,
he lives money. He lives like a prince but he has no pleasures. >From ten in
the morning till two, he sites in his office in Lombard Street, and the pulse
of the city beats differently in his absence."

"I wonder!" the other murmured.

Other people had wondered, too. Still the keen blue eyes looked across
through the misty atmosphere at the grey building opposite. Men and women
passed before him in a constant, unseen procession. No one came and spoke to
him, no one interfered with his meditations. The two men who had been
discussing him passed out of the room presently one of them glanced backwards
in his direction.

"After all, I suppose," he observed, as he passed down the hall, "there is
something great about wealth or else one wouldn't believe that old Anselman
there was thinking of his money-bags. Why, here's Granet. Good fellow! I'd
no idea you'd joined this august company of old fogies."

Granet smiled as he shook hands.

"I haven't," he explained. "You have to be a millionaire, don't you, and a
great political bug, before they'd let you in? No place for poor soldiers! I
have to be content with the Rag."

"Poor devil!" his friend remarked sympathetically,--"best cooking, best wines
in London. These Service men look after themselves all right. What are you
doing here, anyhow, Granet?"

"I'm dining with my uncle," Granet replied, quickly.

"Sir Alfred's in there, waiting for you," his friend told him, indicating the
door,--"he has been sitting at the window watching for you, in fact. So
long!"

The two men passed out and Granet was ushered into the smoking-room. Sir
Alfred came back from his reverie and was greeted by his nephew cordially.
The two men sat by the window for a few moments in silence.

"An aperitif?" Sir Alfred suggested. "Capital!"

They drank mixed vermouth. Sir Alfred picked up an evening paper from his
side.

"Any news?" he asked.

"Nothing fresh," Granet replied. "The whole worlds excited about this
submarine affair. Looks as though we'd got the measure of those Johnnies,
doesn't it?"

"It does indeed," Sir Alfred agreed. "Two submarines, one after the other,
two of the latest class, too, destroyed within a few miles and without a word
of explanation. No wonder every one's excited about it!"

"They're fearfully bucked at the Admiralty, I believe," Granet remarked. "Of
course, they'll pretend that they had this new dodge or whatever it may be, up
their sleeves all the time."

Sir Alfred nodded.

"Well," he said, "come in to dinner, young fellow. You shall entertain me
with tales of your adventures whilst you compare our cuisine here with your
own commissariat."

They passed on into the strangers' dining-room, a small but cheerful apartment
opening out of the general dining-room. The head-waiter ushered them
unctuously to a small table set in the far corner of the room.

"I have obeyed your wishes, Sir Alfred," he announced, as they seated
themselves. "No one else will be dining anywhere near you."

Sir Alfred nodded.

"Knowing how modest you soldiers are in talking of your exploits," he remarked
to Granet, "I have pleaded for seclusion. Here, in the intervals of our being
served with dinner, you can spin me yarns of the Front. The whole thing
fascinates me. I want to hear the story of your escape."

They seated themselves, and Sir Alfred studied the menu for a moment through
his eyeglass. After the service of the soup they were alone. He leaned a
little across the table.

"Ronnie," he said, "I thought it was better to ask you here than to have you
down at the city."

Granet nodded.

"This seems all right," he admitted, glancing around. "Well, one part of the
great work is finished. I have lived for eleven days not quite sure when I
wasn't going to be stood up with my back to the light at the Tower. Now it's
over."

"You've seen Pailleton?"

"Seen him, impressed him, given him the document. He has his plans all made."

"Good! Very good!"

Sir Alfred ate soup for several moments as though it were the best soup on
earth and nothing else was worth consideration. Then he laid down his spoon.

"Magnificent!" he said. "Now listen--these submarines. There was a Taube
close at hand and I can tell you something which the Admiralty here are
keeping dark, with their tongues in their cheeks. Both those submarines were
sunk under water."

"I guessed it," Granet replied coolly. "I not only guessed it but I came very
near the key of the whole thing."

A waiter appeared with the next course, followed by the wine steward, carrying
champagne. Sir Alfred nodded approvingly.

"Just four minutes in the ice," he instructed, "not longer. What you tell me
about the champagne country is, I must confess, a relief," he added, turning
to Granet. "It may not affect us quite so much, but personally I believe that
the whole world is happier and better when champagne is cheap. It is the
bottled gaiety of the nation. A nation of ginger ale drinkers would be doomed
before they reached the second generation. 1900 Pommery, this, Ronnie, and I
drink your health. If I May be allowed one moment's sentiment," he added,
raising his glass, "let me say that I drink your health from the bottom of my
hear, with all the admiration which a man of my age feels for you younger
fellows who are fighting for us and our country."

They drank the toast in silence. In a moment or two they were alone again.

"Go on, Ronnie," his uncle said. "I am interested."

"I met Conyers the other day," Granet proceeded, "the man who commands the
'Scorpion.'  I managed to get an invitation down to Portsmouth to have lunch
with him on his ship. I went down with his sister and the young lady he is
engaged to marry. On deck there was a structure of some sort covered up. I
tried to make inquires about it but they headed me off pretty quick. There
was even a sentry standing on guard before it--wouldn't let me even feel the
shape of it. However, I hadn't given up hope when there came a wireless--no
guests to be allowed on board. Conyers had to pack us all off back to the
hotel, without stopping even for lunch. From the hotel I got a telescope and
I saw a pinnace with half-a-dozen workmen, and a pilot who was evidently an
engineer, land on board. They seemed to be completing the adjustments of some
new piece of mechanism. Then they steamed away out of sight of the land."

"A busy life, yours, Ronnie," Sir Alfred remarked, after a moments pause.
"What about it now? I've had two urgent messages from Berlin this morning."

"It's pretty difficult," Granet acknowledged. "The Scorpion's out in the
Channel or the North Sea. No getting at her. And I don't believe there's
another destroyer yet fitted with this apparatus, whatever it may be."

"They must be making them somewhere, though," Sir Alfred remarked.

His nephew nodded.

"To think," he muttered, "that we've two hundred men spread out at Tyneside,
Woolwich and Portsmouth, and not one of them go on to this! A nation of
spies, indeed! They're mugs, uncle."

"Not altogether that," the banker replied. "We have some reports, although
they don't go far enough. I can put you on to the track of the thing. The
apparatus you saw is something in the nature of an inverted telescope, with
various extraordinary lenses treated by a new process. You can see forty feet
down under the surface of the water for a distance of a mile, and we believe
that attached to the same apparatus is an instrument which brings any moving
object within the range of what they call a deep-water gun."

"Did that come from reports?" Granet asked eagerly.

"It did," Sir Alfred said. "Further than that, the main part of the
instrument is being made under the supervision of Sir Meyville Worth, in a
large workshop erected on his estate in a village near Brancaster in Norfolk."

"I take it back," Granet remarked.

"The plans of the instrument should be worth a hundred thousand pounds," Sir
Alfred continued calmly. "If that is impossible, the destruction of the
little plant would be the next consideration."

"Do I come in here?" Granet inquired.

"You do, Ronnie," his uncle replied. "The name of the village where Sir
Meyville Worth lives is Market Burnham, which, as I think I told you, is
within a few miles of Brancaster. Geoffrey, at my instigation, has arranged a
harmless little golf party to go to Brancaster the day after to-morrow. You
will accompany them. In the meantime, Miss Worth, Sir Meyville Worth's only
daughter, is staying in London until Wednesday. She is lunching with your
aunt at the Ritz to-morrow. I have made some other arrangements in connection
with your visit to Norfolk, which will keep for the present. I see that some
strangers have entered the room. Tell me exactly how you came by the wound in
your foot?"

Granet turned a little around. There was a queer change in his face as he
looked back at his uncle.

"Do you know the man at that corner table?" he asked.

Sir Alfred glanced across the room.

"Very slightly. I spoke to him an hour ago. He thanked me for some
ambulances. He is the chief inspector of hospitals, I think--Major Thomson,
his name is."

"Did you happen to say that I was dining with you?"

Sir Alfred reflected for a moment.

"I believe that I did mention it," he admitted. "Why?"

Granet struggled for a moment with an idea and rejected it. He drained his
glass and leaned across the table.

"He's a dull enough person really," he remarked, a little under his breath,
"but I seem to be always running up against him. Once or twice he's given me
rather a start."

Sir Alfred smiled. He called the wine steward and pointed to his nephew's
glass.

"The best thing in the world," he observed drily, as he watched the wine being
poured out, "for presentiments."

CHAPTER XVII

Lady Anselman stood once more in the foyer of the Ritz Hotel and counted her
guests. It was a smaller party this time, and in its way a less distinguished
one. There were a couple of officers, friends of Granet's, back from the
Front on leave; Lady Conyers, with Geraldine and Olive; Granet himself; and a
tall, dark girl with pallid complexion and brilliant eyes, who had come with
Lady Anselman and who was standing now by her side.

"I suppose you know everybody, my dear?" Lady Anselman asked her genially.

The girl shook her head a little disconsolately.

"We are so little in London, Lady Anselman," she murmured. "You know how
difficult father is, and just now he is worse than ever. In fact, if he
weren't so hard at work I don't believe he'd have let me come even now."

"These scientific men," Lady Anselman declared, "are great boons to the
country, but as parent I am afraid they are just a little thoughtless. Major
Harrison and Colonel Grey, let me present you to my young charge--for the day
only, unfortunately--Miss Worth. Now, Ronnie, if you can be persuaded to let
Miss Conyers have a moment's peace perhaps you will show us the way in to
lunch."

Granet promptly abandoned his whispered conversation with Geraldine. The
little company moved in and took their places at the round table which was
usually reserved for Lady Anselman on Tuesdays.

"Some people," the latter remarked, as she seated herself, "find fault with me
for going on with my luncheons this season. Even Alfred won't come except now
and then. Personally, I have very strong views about it. I think we all
ought to keep on doing just the same as usual--to a certain extent, of course.
There is no reason why we should bring the hotel proprietors and shopkeepers
to the brink of ruin because we are all feeling more or less miserable."

"Quite right," her neighbour, Colonel Grey, assented. "I am sure it wouldn't
do us any good out there to feel that you were all sitting in sackcloth and
ashes. Besides, think how pleasant this is to come home to," he added,
looking around the little table. "Jove! What a good-looking girl Miss
Conyers is!"

Lady Anselman nodded and lowered her voice a little.

"She has just broken her engagement to Surgeon-Major Thomson. I wonder
whether you know him?"

"Inspector of Field Hospitals or something, isn't he?" the other remarked
carelessly. "I came across him once at Boulogne. Rather a dull sort of
fellow he seemed.

Lady Anselman sighed.

"I am afraid Geraldine found him so," she agreed. "Her mother is very
disappointed. I can't help thinking myself, though, that a girl with her
appearance ought to do better."

The Colonel reflected for a moment.

"Seems to me I've heard something about Thomson somewhere," he said, half to
himself. "By-the-bye, who is the pale girl with the wonderful eyes, to whom
your nephew is making himself so agreeable?"

"That is Isabel Worth," Lady Anselman replied. "She is the daughter of Sir
Meyville Worth, the great scientist. I am afraid she has rather a dull time,
poor girl. Her father lives in an out-of-the-way village of Norfolk, spends
all his time trying to discover things, and forgets that he has a daughter at
all. She has been in London for a few days with an aunt, but I don't believe
that the old lady is able to do much for her."

"Ronnie seems to be making the running all right," her neighbour observed.

"I asked him specially to look after her," Lady Anselman confided, "and Ronnie
is always such a dear at doing what he is told."

Major Harrison leaned across the table towards them.

"Didn't I hear you mention Thomson's name just now?" he inquired. "I saw him
the other day in Boulogne. Awful swell he was about something, too. A
destroyer brought him across, and a Government motor-car was waiting at the
quay to rush him up to the Front. We all thought at Boulogne that royalty was
coming, at least."

There was a slight frown on Granet's forehead. He glanced half unconsciously
towards Geraldine.

"Mysterious sort of fellow, Thomson," Major Harrison continued, in blissful
ignorance of the peculiar significance of his words. "You see him in Paris
one day, you hear of him at the furthermost point of the French lines
immediately afterwards, he reports at headquarters within a few hours, and you
meet him slipping out of a back door of the War Office, a day or two later."

"Inspector of Field Hospitals is a post which I think must have been created
for him," Colonel Grey remarked. "He's an impenetrable sort of chap."

"Was Major Thomson going or returning from France when you saw him last?"
Geraldine asked, looking across the table.

"Coming back. When we left Boulogne, the destroyer which brought him over was
waiting in the harbour. It passed us in mid-Channel, doing about thirty knots
to our eighteen. Prince Cyril was rather sick. He was bringing dispatches
but no one seemed to have thought of providing a destroyer for him."

"After all," Lady Anselman murmured, "there is nothing very much more
important than our hospitals."

The conversation drifted away from Thomson. Granet was making himself very
agreeable indeed to Isabel Worth. There was a little more colour in her
cheeks than at the commencement of luncheon, and her manner had become more
animated.

"Tell me about the village where you live?" he inquired--"Market Burnham,
isn't it?"

"When we first went there," she replied, "I thought that it was simply
Paradise. That was four years ago, though, and I scarcely counted upon
spending the winters there."

"You find it lovely, then"

She shivered a little, half closing her eyes as though to shut out some
unpleasant memory.

"The house," she explained, "is on a sort of tongue of land, with a tidal
river on either side and the sea not fifty yards away from our drawing-room
window. When there are high tides, we are simply cut off from the mainland
altogether unless we go across on a farm cart."

"You mustn't draw too gloomy a picture of your home," Lady Anselman said. "I
have seen it when it was simply heavenly."

"And I have seen it," the girl retorted, with a note of grimness in her tone,
"when it was a great deal more like the other place--stillness that seems
almost to stifle you, grey mists that choke your breath and blot out
everything; nothing but the gurgling of a little water, and the sighing--the
most melancholy sighing you ever heard--of the wind in our ragged elms. I am
talking about the autumn and winter now, you must remember."

"It doesn't sound attractive," Granet admitted. "By-the-bye, which side of
Norfolk are you? You are nowhere near Brancaster, I suppose?"

"We are within four miles of it," the girl replied quickly. "You don't ever
come there, do you?"

Granet looked at her with uplifted eyebrows.

"This is really rather a coincidence!" he exclaimed. "I've never been to
Brancaster in my life but I've promised one or two fellows to go down to the
Dormy House there, to-morrow or the next day, and have a week's golf. Geoff
Anselman is going, for one."

The girl was for a moment almost good-looking. Her eyes glowed, her tone was
eloquently appealing.

"You'll come by and see us, won't you?" she begged.

"If I may, I'd be delighted," Granet promised heartily. "When are you going
back?"

"To-morrow. You're quite sure that you'll come?"

"I shall come all right," Granet assured her. "I'm not so keen on golf as
some of the fellows, and my arm's still a little dicky, but I'm fed up with
London, and I'm not allowed even to come before the Board again for a
fortnight, so I rather welcome the chance of getting right away. The links
are good, I suppose?"

"Wonderful," Miss Worth agreed eagerly, "and I think the club-house is very
comfortable. There are often some quite nice men staying there. If only
father weren't so awfully peculiar, the place would be almost tolerable in the
season. That reminds me," she went on, with a little sigh, "I must warn you
about father. He's the most unsociable person that ever lived."

"I'm not shy," Granet laughed. "By-the-bye, pardon me, but isn't your father
the Sir Meyville Worth who invents things? I'm not quite sure what sort of
things," he added. "Perhaps you'd better post me up before I come?"

"I sha'n't tell you a thing." Isabel Worth declared. "Just now it's very much
better for you to know nothing whatever about him. He has what I call the
inventors' fidgets, for some reason or other. If a strange person comes near
the place he simply loses his head."

"Perhaps I sha'n't be welcome, then?" Granet remarked disconsolately.

There was a flash in the girl's eyes as she answered him.

"I can assure you that you will, Captain Granet," she said. "If father
chooses to behave like a bear, well, I'll try and make up for him."

She glanced at him impressively and Granet bowed. A few minutes later in
obedience to Lady Anselman's signal, they all made their way into the lounge,
where coffee was being served. Granet made his way to Geraldine's side but
she received him a little coldly.

"I have been doing my aunt's behests," he explained. "My strict orders were
to make myself agreeable to a young woman who lives in a sort of bluebeard's
house, where no visitors are allowed and smiling is prohibited."

Geraldine looked across at Isabel Worth.

"I never met Miss Worth before," she said. "I believe her father is
wonderfully clever. Did I hear you say that you were going out of town?"

Granet nodded.

"I am going away for a few days. I am going away," he added, dropping his
voice, "ostensibly for a change of air. I have another reason for going."

He looked at her steadfastly and she forgot her vague misgivings of a few
minutes ago. After all, his perceptions were right. It was better for him to
leave London for a time.

"I hope the change will do you good," she said quietly. "I think, perhaps,
you are right to go."

CHAPTER XVIII

Granet, a few days later, brought his car to a standstill in front of an
ordinary five-barred gate upon which was painted in white letters "Market
Burnham Hall."  A slight grey mist was falling and the country inland was
almost blotted from sight. On the other side of the gate a sandy driver
disappeared into an avenue of ragged and stunted elm trees, which effectually
concealed any view of the house.

"Seems as though the girl were right," Granet muttered to himself. "However,
here goes."

He backed his car close to the side of the hedge, and laying his hand upon the
latch of the gate, prepared to swing it open. Almost immediately a figure
stepped out from the shrubs.

"Halt!"

Granet looked with surprise at the khaki-clad figure.

"Your name and destination?" the man demanded.

"Captain Granet of the Royal Fusiliers, home from the Front on leave," Granet
replied. "I was going up to the Hall to call on Miss Worth."

"Stay where you are, if you please, sir," the man replied.

He stepped back into the sentry box and spoke through a telephone. In a
moment or two he reappeared.

"Pass on, please, sir," he said.

Granet walked slowly up the avenue, his hands behind him, a frown upon his
forehead. Perhaps, after all, things were not to be so easy for him. On
either side he could see the stretches of sand, and here and there the long
creeks of salt water. As he came nearer to the house, the smell of the sea
grew stronger, the tops of the trees were more bowed than ever, sand was blown
everywhere across the hopeless flower-beds. The house itself, suddenly
revealed, was a grim weather-beaten structure, built on the very edge of a
queer, barrow-like tongue of land which ended with the house itself. The sea
was breaking on the few yards of beach sheer below the windows. To his right
was a walled garden, some lawns and greenhouses; to the left, stables, a
garage, and two or three labourer's cottages. At the front door another
soldier was stationed doing sentry duty. He stood on one side, however, and
allowed Granet to ring the bell.

"Officers quartered here?" Granet inquired.

"Only one, sir," the man replied.

The door was opened almost immediately by a woman-servant. She did not wait
for Granet to announce himself but motioned him to follow her into a large,
circular, stone hall, across which she led him quickly and threw open the door
of the drawing-room. Isabel Worth was standing just inside the room, as
though listening. She held out her hand and there was no doubt about her
welcome.

"Captain Granet," she said almost in a whisper, "of course you'll think we are
all mad, but would you mind coming upstairs into my little sitting-room?"

"Of course not," Granet acquiesced. "I'll come anywhere, with pleasure. What
a view you have from here!"

He glanced through the high windows at the other end of the room. She laid
her fingers upon his arm and led him towards the door.

"Quietly, please," she whispered. "Try and imagine that you are in a house of
conspirators."

She led him up the quaint stone staircase, spiral-shaped, to the first floor.
Arrived there, she paused to listen for a moment, then breathed a little more
freely and led him to a small sitting-room at the end of a long passage. It
was a pleasant little apartment and looked sheer out over the sea. She threw
herself down upon a sofa with a sigh of relief, and pointed to a chair.

"Do sit down, Captain Granet," she begged. "I am really not in the least
insane but father is. You know, I got back on Wednesday night and was met at
once with stern orders that no visitors of any sort were to be received, that
the tradespeople were to be interviewed at the front gates--in fact that the
house was to be in a state of siege."

Granet appeared puzzled.

"But why?"

"Simply because dad has gone out of his senses," she replied wearily. "Look
here."

She led him cautiously to the window and pointed downwards. About fifty yards
out at sea was a queer wooden structure, set up on strong supports. From
where they were, nothing was to be seen but a windowless wall of framework and
a rope ladder. Underneath, a boat was tethered to one of the supports. About
thirty yards away, a man was rowing leisurely around in another small boat.

"That's where father spends about twelve hours a day," she said. "What he is
doing no one knows. He won't even allow me to speak of it. When we meet at
meals, I am not supposed to allude to the fact that he has been out in that
crazy place. If ever he happens to speak of it, he calls it his workshop."

"But he is not alone there?" Granet asked.

"Oh, no! There are two or three men from London, and an American, working
with him. Then do you see the corner of the garden there?"

She pointed to a long barn or boathouse almost upon the beach. Before the
door two sentries were standing. Even from where they sat they could hear the
faint whirr of a dynamo.

"There are twenty men at work in there," she said. "They all sleep in the
barn or the potting sheds. They are not allowed even to go down to the
village. Now, perhaps, you can begin to understand, Captain Granet, what it
is like to be here."

"Well, it all sounds very interesting," he remarked, "but I should think it
must be deadly for you. Your father invents no end of wonderful things,
doesn't he?"

"If he does, he never speaks about it," the girl answered a little bitterly.
"All that he wants from me is my absence or my silence. When I came back the
other night, he was furious. If he'd thought about it, I'm sure he'd have had
me stay in London. Now that I am here, though, I am simply a prisoner."

Granet resumed his seat and lit the cigarette which she insisted upon his
smoking.

"Well," he observed, "it does seem hard upon you, Miss Worth. On the other
hand, it really is rather interesting, isn't it, to think that your father is
such a man of mysteries?"

The girl sighed.

"I suppose so," she admitted, "but then, you see, father is almost brutal
about taking any one into his confidence. He never tells even me a thing, or
encourages me to ask a question. I think for that reason I have grown rather
to resent his work and the ridiculous restriction he places upon my freedom
because of it."

A parlourmaid entered with tea, a few minutes later, and Granet moved to his
hostess' side upon the sofa. He showed no more interest in outside
happenings. He was an adept at light conversation and he made himself
thoroughly agreeable for the next hour. Then he rose quickly to his feet.

"I must go," he declared.

She sighed.

"It has been so nice to have you here," she said, "but if you only knew how
difficult it was to arrange, it, you'd understand why I hesitate to ask you to
come again."

"Why shouldn't you come and lunch with me to-morrow at the Golf Club?" he
asked.

She hesitated. It was obvious that the suggestion appealed to her.

"I believe I could," she assented. "Captain Chalmers has a small motor-car
he'd lend me, and if I go out with my golf clubs it would be all right. Very
likely father will sleep out there and we sha'n't see anything of him until
to-morrow."

Granet stepped once more to the window. The mists had rolled up more thickly
than ever and the queer little structure was almost invisible. A bright
light, however, fell upon the water a little distance away.

"Your father has electric light out there," he remarked.

"Yes, they have a wire from the shed," she told him. "Whatever he's trying to
do, he needs a very intense and concentrated light at times."

Granet drew a little sigh.

"Well, I hope it's something that'll do us a bit of good," he said. "We need
it. The Germans are miles ahead of us with regard to all new-fangled ideas."

She opened her lips and closed them again. Granet, who had suddenly stiffened
into rigid attention, felt a quick impulse of disappointment.

"I have rung the bell for my own maid," she said. "She will show you out of
the place. Don't let any one see you, if you can help it."

"And to-morrow?" he asked. "You will lunch with me?"

"I will be at the Golf Club," she promised, "at one o'clock."

Granet was conducted almost stealthily down the stairs and into the avenue.
Half-way to the gate he paused to listen. He was hidden from sight now by the
gathering twilight and the rolling mists. From behind the house came the
softly muffled roar of the tide sweeping in, and, with sharper insistence, the
whirr of machinery from the boathouse. Granet lit a cigarette and walked
thoughtfully away. Just as he climbed into the car, a peculiar light through
the trees startled him. He stood up and watched. From the top of the house a
slowly revolving searchlight played upon the waters.

CHAPTER XIX

It was a very cheerful little party dining that night at the Dormy House Club.
There was Granet; Geoffrey Anselman, his cousin, who played for Cambridge and
rowed two; Major Harrison, whose leave had been extended another three weeks;
and the secretary of the club, who made up the quartette.

"By-the-bye, where were you this afternoon, Captain Granet?" the latter asked.
"You left Anselman to play our best ball. Jolly good hiding he gave us, too."

"Went out for a spin," Granet explained, "and afterwards fell fast asleep in
my room. Wonderful air, yours, you know," he went on.

"I slept like a top last night," Major Harrison declared. "The first three
nights I was home I never closed my eyes."

Granet leaned across the table to the secretary.

"Dickens," he remarked, "that's a queer-looking fellow at the further end of
the room. Who is he?"

The secretary glanced around and smiled.

"You mean that little fellow with the glasses and the stoop? He arrived last
night and asked for a match this morning. You see what a miserable wizened-up
looking creature he is? I found him a twelve man and he wiped the floor with
me. Guess what his handicap is?"

"No idea," Granet replied. "Forty, I should think."

"Scratch at St. Andrews," Dickens told them. "His name's Collins. I don't'
know anything else about him. He's paid for a week and we're jolly glad to
get visitors at all these times."

"Bridge or billiards?" young Anselman asked, rising.

"Let's play billiards," Granet suggested. "The stretching across the table
does me good."

"We'll have a snooker, then," Major Harrison decided.

They played for some time. The wizened-looking little man came and watched
them benevolently, peering every now and then through his spectacles, and
applauding mildly any particularly good stroke. At eleven o'clock they turned
out the lights and made their way to their rooms. Shortly before midnight,
Granet, in his dressing-gown, stole softly across the passage and opened,
without knocking, the door of a room opposite to him. The wizened-looking
little man was seated upon the edge of the bed, half-dressed. Granet turned
the key in the lock, stood for a moment listening and swung slowly around.

"Well?" he exclaimed softly.

The tenant of the room nodded. He had taken off his glasses and their absence
revealed a face of strong individuality. He spoke quietly but distinctly.

"You have explored the house?"

"As far as I could," Granet replied. "The place is almost in a state of
siege."

"Proves that we are on the right track, any way. What's that building that
seems to stand out in the water?"

"How do you know about it?" Granet demanded.

"I sailed out this evening, hired a boat at Brancaster Staithe. The fellow
wouldn't go anywhere near Market Burnham, though, and I'm rather sorry I tried
to make him. They've got the scares here, right enough, Granet. I asked him
to let me the boat for a week and he wasn't even civil about it. Didn't want
no strangers around these shores, he told me. When I paid him for the
afternoon he was surly about it and kept looking at my field-glasses."

Granet frowned heavily.

"It isn't going to be an easy matter," he confessed. "I hear the Admiralty
are going to take over the whole thing within the next few days, and are
sending Marines down. How's the time?"

They glanced at their watches. It was five minutes before midnight. As
though by common consent, they both crossed to the window and stood looking
out into the darkness. A slight wind was moving amongst the treetops, the
night was clear but moonless. About half a mile away they could just discern
a corner of the club-house. They stood watching it in silence. At five
minutes past twelve, Granet shut his watch with a click.

"Not to-night, then," he whispered. "Collins!"

"Well?"

"What is going on in that wooden shanty?"

The little man dropped his voice.

"Germany lost two submarines in one day," he murmured. "The device which got
them came from that little workshop of Worth's. The plans are probably there
or on the premises somewhere."

Granet groaned.

"AS a matter of fact I have been within a few yards of the thing," he said.
"It was all fenced around with match-boarding."

"Do you mean that you have been allowed on board the Scorpion?"

Granet nodded.

"I had the rottenest luck," he declared. "I took Miss Conyers and her friend
down to see her brother, Commander Conyers. We were invited to lunch on
board. At the last moment we were turned off. Through some glasses from the
roof of the Ship I saw some workmen pull down the match-boarding, but I
couldn't make out what the structure was."

"I can give you an idea," Collins remarked. "This fellow Worth has got hold
of some system of concentric lenses, with extraordinary reflectors which
enable him to see distinctly at least thirty feet under water. Then they have
a recording instrument, according to which they alter the gradient of a new
gun, with shells that explode under water. Von Lowitz was on the track of
something of this sort last year, but he gave it up chiefly because Krupps
wouldn't guarantee him a shell."

"Krupps gave it up a little too soon, then," Granet muttered. "Collins, if we
can't smash up this little establishment there'll be a dozen destroyers before
long rigged up with this infernal contrivance."

The little man stood before the window and gazed steadfastly out seawards.

"They'll be here this week," he said confidently. "You'd better go now,
Granet. It's all over for to-night."

Granet nodded and left the room quietly. Every one in the Dormy House was
sound asleep. He made his way back to his own apartment without difficulty.
Only the little man remained seated at the window, with his eyes fixed upon
the bank of murky clouds which lowered over the sea.

CHAPTER XX

Isabel Worth leaned back in the comfortable seat by Granet's side and breathed
a little sigh of content. She had enjoyed her luncheon party a deux, their
stroll along the sands afterwards, and she was fully prepared to enjoy this
short drive homewards.

"What a wonderful car yours is!" she murmured. "But do tell me--what on earth
have you got in behind?"

"It's just a little experimental invention of a friend of mine," he explained.
"Some day we are going to try it on one of these creeks. It's a collapsible
canvas boat."

"Don't try it anywhere near us," she laughed. "Two of the fishermen from
Wells sailed in a little too close to the shed yesterday and the soldiers
fired a volley at them."

Garnet made a grimace.

"Do you know I am becoming most frightfully curious about your father's work?"
he observed.

"Are you really?" she replied carelessly. "For my part, I wouldn't even take
the trouble to climb up the ladder into the workshop."

"But you must know something about what is going on there?" Granet persisted.

"I really don't," she assured him. "It's some wonderful invention, I believe,
but I can't help resenting anything that makes us live like hermits, suspect
even the tradespeople, give up entertaining altogether, give up even seeing
our friends. I hope you are not going to hurry away, Captain Granet. I
haven't had a soul to speak to down here for months."

"I don't think I shall go just yet," he answered. "I want first to accomplish
what I came here for."

She turned her head very slowly and looked at him. There was quite a becoming
flush upon her cheeks.

"What did you come for?" she asked softly.

He was silent for a moment. Already his foot was on the brake of the car;
they were drawing near the plain, five-barred gates.

"Perhaps I am not quite sure about that myself," he whispered.

They had come to a standstill. She descended reluctantly.

"I hate to send you away," she sighed, "it seems so inhospitable. Will you
come in for a little time? The worst that can happen, if we meet dad, is that
he might be rather rude."

"I'll risk it with pleasure," Granet replied.

"Can I see your collapsible boat?" she asked, peering in behind.

He shook his head.

"It isn't my secret," he said, "and besides, I don't think my friend has the
patent for it yet."

The sentry stood by and allowed them to pass, although he looked searchingly
at Granet. They walked slowly up the scrubby avenue to the house. Once
Granet paused to look down at the long arm of the sea on his left.

"You have quite a river there," he remarked.

She nodded.

"That used to be the principal waterway from Burnham village. Quite a large
boat can get down now at high tide."

They entered the house and Isabel gave a little gesture of dismay. She
clutched for a moment at Granet's arm. An elderly man, dressed in somber
black clothes disgracefully dusty, collarless, with a mass of white hair blown
all over his face, was walking up and down the hall with a great pair of
horn-rimmed spectacles clutched in his hand. He stopped short at the sound of
the opening door and hurried towards them. There was nothing about his
appearance in the least terrifying. He seemed, in fact, bubbling over with
excited good-humour.

"Isabel, my dear," he exclaimed, "it is wonderful! I have succeeded! I have
changed the principles of a lifetime, made the most brilliant optical
experiment which any man of science has ever ventured to essay, with the
result--well, you shall see. I have wired to the Admiralty, wired for more
work-people. Captain Chalmers, is it not?" he went on. "You must tell your
men to double and redouble their energies. This place is worth watching now.
Come, I will show you something amazing."

He turned and led them hastily towards the back door. Isabel gripped Granet's
arm.

"He thinks you are the officer in command of the platoon here," she whispered.
"Better let him go on thinking so."

Granet nodded.

"Is he going to take us to the workshop?"

"I believe so," she assented.

They had hard work to keep up with Sir Meyville as he led them hastily down
the little stretch of shingle to where a man was sitting in a boat. They all
jumped in. The man with the oars looked doubtfully for a moment at Granet,
but pulled off at once when ordered to do so. They rowed round to the front
of the queer little structure. A man from inside held out his hand and helped
them up. Another young man, with books piled on the floor by his side, was
making some calculations at a table. Almost the whole of the opening of the
place was taken up by what seemed to be a queer medley of telescopes and
lenses pointing different ways. Sir Meyville beamed upon them as he hastily
turned a handle.

"Now," he promised, "you shall see what no one has ever seen before. See, I
point that arrow at that spot, about fifty yards out. Now look through this
one, Isabel."

The girl stooped forward, was silent for a moment, then she gave a little cry
of wonder. She clutched Granet's arm and made him take her place. He, too,
called out softly. He saw the sandy bottom covered with shells, a rock with
tentacles of seaweed floating from it, several huge crabs, a multitude of
small fishes. Everything was clear and distinct. He looked away with a
little gasp.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed.

Sir Meyville's smile was beatific.

"That is my share," he said. "Down in the other workshop my partners are hard
at it. They, too, have met with success. You must tell your men, Captain
Chalmers, never to relax their vigil. This place must be watched by night and
by day. My last invention was a great step forward, but this is absolute
success. For the next few months this is the most precious spot in Europe."

"It isn't Captain Chalmers, father," Isabel interrupted.

Sir Meyville seemed suddenly to become still. He looked fixedly at Granet.

"Who are you, then?" he demanded. "Who are you, sir?"

"I am Captain Granet of the Royal Fusiliers, back from the Front, wounded,"
Granet replied. "I can assure you that I am a perfectly trustworthy person."

"But I don't understand," Sir Meyville said sharply. "What are you doing
here?"

"I came to call upon your daughter," Granet explained. "I had the pleasure of
meeting her at lunch at Lady Anselman's the other day. We have been playing
golf together at Brancaster."

Sir Meyville began to mumble to himself as he pushed them into the boat.

"My fault," he muttered,--"my fault. Captain Granet, I thought that my
daughter knew my wishes. I am not at present in a position to receive guests
or visitors of any description. You will pardon my apparent inhospitality. I
shall ask you, sir, to kindly forget this visit and to keep away from here for
the present.

"I shall obey your wishes, of course, sir," Granet promised. "I can assure
you that I am quite a harmless person, though."

"I do not doubt it, sir," Sir Meyville replied, "but it is the harmless people
of the world who do the most mischief. An idle word here or there and great
secrets are given away. If you will allow me, I will show you a quicker way
down the avenue, without going to the house."

Granet shrugged his shoulders.

"Just as you will, sir," he assented.

"You can go in, Isabel," her father directed curtly. "I will see Captain
Granet off."

She obeyed and took leave of her guest with a little shrug of the shoulders.
Sir Meyville took Granet's arm and led him down the avenue.

"Captain Granet," he said gravely, "I am an indiscreet person and I have an
indiscreet daughter. Bearing in mind your profession, I may speak to you as
man to man. Keep what you have seen absolutely secret. Put a seal upon your
memory. Go back to Brancaster and don't even look again in this direction.
The soldiers round this place have orders not to stand on ceremony with any
one, and by to-night I believe we are to have an escort of Marines here as
well. What you have seen is for the good of the country."

"I congratulate you heartily, sir," Granet replied, shaking hands. "Of course
I'll keep away, if I must. I hope when this is all over, though, you will
allow me to come and renew my acquaintance with your daughter."

"When it is over, with pleasure," Sir Meyville assented.

Granet stepped into his car and drove off. The inventor stood looking after
him. Then he spoke to the sentry and made his way across the gardens towards
the boat-shed.

"I ought to have known it from the first," he muttered. "Reciprocal
refraction was the one thing to think about."

Granet, as he drove back to the Dormy House, was conscious of a curious change
in the weather. The wind, which had been blowing more or less during the last
few days, had suddenly dropped. There was a new heaviness in the atmosphere,
little banks of transparent mist were drifting in from seawards. More than
once he stopped the car and, standing up, looked steadily away seawards. The
long stretch of marshland, on which the golf links were situated, was empty.
A slight, drizzling rain was falling. He found, when he reached the Dormy
House, that nearly all the men were assembled in one of the large
sitting-rooms. A table of bridge had been made up. Mr. Collins was seated in
an easy-chair close to the window, reading a review. Granet accepted a cup of
tea and stood on the hearth-rug.

"How did the golf go this afternoon?" he inquired.

"I was dead off it," Anselman replied gloomily.

"Our friend in the easy-chair there knocked spots off us."

Mr. Collins looked up and grunted and looked out of the window again.

"Either of you fellows going to cut in at bridge?" young Anselman continued.

Granet shook his head and walked to the window.

"I can't stick cards in the daytime."

Mr. Collins shut up his review.

"I agree with you, sir," he said. "I endeavoured to persuade one of these
gentlemen to play another nine holes--unsuccessfully, I regret to state."

Granet lit a cigarette.

"Well," he remarked, "it's too far to get down to the links again but I'll
play you a game of bowls, if you like."

The other glanced out upon the lawn and rose to his feet.

"It is an excellent suggestion," he declared. "If you will give me five
minutes to fetch my mackintosh and galoshes, it would interest me to see
whether I have profited by the lessons I took in Scotland."

They met, a few moments later, in the garden. Mr. Collins threw the jack with
great precision and they played an end during which his superiority was
apparent. They strolled together across the lawn, well away now from the
house. For the first time Granet dropped his careless tone.

"What do you make of this change in the weather?" he asked quickly.

"It's just what they were waiting for," the other replied. "What about this
afternoon?"

"I am not scientist, worse luck," Granet replied impatiently, "but I saw
enough to convince me that they've got the right idea. Sir Meyville thought i
was the man commanding the escort they've given him,--actually rowed me out to
the workshop and showed me the whole thing. I tell you I saw it just as you
described it,--saw the bottom of the sea, even the colour of the seaweed, the
holes in the rocks."

"And they've got the shells, too," Collins muttered, "the shells that burst
under water."

Granet looked around. They were playing the other end now.

"Listen!" he said.

They paused in the middle of the lawn. Granet held up his handkerchief and
turned his cheek seaward. There was still little more than a floating breath
of air but his cheek was covered with moisture.

"I have everything ready," he said. "Just before we go to bed to-night I
shall swear that I hear and aeroplane. You're sure your watch is right to the
second, Collins?"

"I am as sure that it is right," the other replied grimly, "as I am that
to-night you and I my young friend, are going to play with our lives a little
more carelessly than with this china ball. A good throw, that I think," he
went on, measuring it with his eye carefully. "Come, my friend, you'll have
to improve. My Scotch practice is beginning to tell."

Geoffrey Anselman threw up the window and looked out.

"Pretty hot stuff, isn't he Ronnie?" he asked.

Granet glanced at his opponent, with his bent shoulders, his hard face, hooked
nose and thin gold spectacles.

"Yes," he admitted quietly, "he's too good for me."

CHAPTER XXI

At about half-past ten that evening, Granet suddenly threw down his cue in the
middle of a game of billiards, and stood, for a moment, in a listening
attitude.

"Jove, I believe that's an airship!" he exclaimed, and hurried out of the
room.

They all followed him. He was standing just outside the French-windows of the
sitting-room, upon the gravel walk, his head upturned, listening intently.
There was scarcely a breath of wind, no moon nor any stars. Little clouds of
grey mist hung about on the marshes, shutting out their view of the sea. The
stillness was more than usually intense.

"Can't hear a thing," young Anselman muttered at last.

"It may have been fancy," Granet admitted.

"A motor-cycle going along the Huntstanton Road," Major Harrison suggested.

"It's a magnificent night for a raid," Dickens remarked glancing around.

"No chance of Zepps over here, I should say," Collins declared, a little
didactically. "I was looking at your map at the golf club only this morning."

They all made their way back to the house. Granet, however, seemed still
dissatisfied.

"I'm going to see that my car's all right," he told them. "I left it in the
open shed."

He was absent for about twenty minutes. When he returned, they had finished
the game of snooker pool without him and were all sitting on the lounge by the
side of the billiard table, talking of the war. Granet listened for a few
minutes and then said good-night a little abruptly. He lit his candle outside
and went slowly to his room. Arrived there, he glanced at his watch and
locked the door. It was half-past eleven. He changed his clothes quickly,
put on some rubber-soled shoes and slipped a brandy flask and a revolver into
his pocket. Then he sat down before his window with his watch in his hand.
He was conscious of a certain foreboding from which he had never been able to
escape since his arrival. In France and Belgium he had lived through fateful
hours, carrying more than once his life in his hands. His risk to-night was
an equal one but the exhilaration seemed lacking. This work in a country
apparently at peace seemed somehow on a different level. If it were less
dangerous, it was also less stimulating. In those few moments the soldier
blood in him called for the turmoil of war, the panorama of life and death,
the fierce, hot excitement of juggling with fate while the heavens themselves
seemed raining death on every side. Here there was nothing but silence, the
soft splash of the distant sea, the barking of a distant dog. The danger was
vivid and actual but without the stimulus of that blood-red background. He
glanced at his watch. It wanted still ten minutes to twelve. For a moment
then he suffered his thoughts to go back to the new thing which had crept into
his life. He was suddenly back in the Milan, he saw the backward turn of her
head, the almost wistful look in her eyes as she made her little
pronouncement. She had broken her engagement. Why? It was a battle, indeed,
he was fighting with that still, cold antagonist, whom he half despised and
half feared, the man concerning whose actual personality he had felt so many
doubts. What if things should go wrong to-night, if the whole dramatic story
should be handed over for the glory and wonder of the halfpenny press! He
could fancy their headlines, imagine even their trenchant paragraphs. It was
skating on the thinnest of ice--and for what? His fingers gripped the damp
window-sill. He raised himself a little higher. His eyes fell upon his
watch--still a minute or two to twelve. Slowly he stole to his door and
listened. The place was silent. He made his way on tiptoe across the landing
and entered Collins' room. The latter was seated before the wide-open window.
He had blown out his candle and the room was in darkness. He half turned his
head at Granet's entrance.

"Two minutes!" he exclaimed softly. "Granet, it will be to-night. Are you
ready?"

"Absolutely!"

They stood by the open window in silence. Nothing had changed. It was not
yet time for the singing of the earliest birds. The tiny village lay behind
them, silent and asleep; in front, nothing but the marshes, uninhabited,
lonely and quiet, the golf club-house empty and deserted. They stood and
watched, their faces turned steadfastly in a certain direction. Gradually
their eyes, growing accustomed to the dim and changing light, could pierce the
black line above the grey where the sea came stealing up the sandy places with
low murmurs, throwing with every wave longer arms into the land.

"Twelve o'clock!" Collins muttered.

Suddenly Granet's fingers dug into his shoulder. From out of that pall of
velvet darkness which hung below the clouds, came for a single moment a vision
of violet light. It rose apparently from nowhere, it passed away into space.
It was visible barely for five seconds, then it had gone. Granet spoke with a
little sob.

"My God!" he murmured. "They're coming!"

Collins was already on his feet. He had straightened himself wonderfully, and
there was a new alertness in his manner. He, too, wore rubber shoes and his
movements were absolutely noiseless. He carried a little electric torch in
his hand, which he flashed around the room while he placed several small
articles in his pocket. Then he pushed open the door and listened. He turned
back, held up his finger and nodded. The two men passed down the stairs,
through the sitting-room, out on to the lawn by a door left unfastened, and
round the house to the shed. Together they pushed the car down the slight
incline of the drive. Granet mounted into the driving-seat and pressed the
self-starter. Collins took the place by his side.

"Remember," Granet whispered, "we heard something and I met you in the hall.
Sit tight."

They sped with all the silence and smoothness of their six-cylinder up the
tree-hung road, through the sleeping village and along the narrow lane to
Market Burnham. When they were within about a hundred yards of the gate,
Granet brought the car to a standstill.

"There are at least two sentries that way," he said, "and if Sir Meyville told
me the truth, they may have a special guard of Marines out to-night. This is
where we take to the marshes. Listen. Can you hear anything?"

They both held their breath.

"Nothing yet," Collins muttered. "Let's get the things out quickly."

Granet hurried to the back of the car, ripping open the coverings. In a few
moments they had dragged over the side a small collapsible boat of canvas
stretched across some bamboo joints, with two tiny sculls. They clambered up
the bank.

"The creek must be close here," Granet whispered. "Don't show a light.
Listen!"

This time they could hear the sound of an engine beating away in the
boat-house on the other side of the Hall. Through the closely-drawn curtains,
too, they could see faint fingers of light from the house on the sea.

"They are working still," Granet continued. "Look out, Collins, that's the
creek."

They pushed the boat into the middle of the black arm of water and stepped
cautiously into it. Taking one of the paddles, Granet, kneeling down,
propelled it slowly seaward. Once or twice they ran into the bank and had to
push off, but very soon their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. By
degrees the creek broadened. They passed close to the walls of the garden,
and very soon they were perceptibly nearer the quaintly-situated workshop.
Granet paused for a moment from his labours.

"The Hall is dark enough," he muttered. "Listen!"

They heard the regular pacing of a sentinel in the drive. Nearer to them, on
the top of the wall, they fancied that they heard the clash of a bayonet.
Granet dropped his voice to the barest whisper.

"We are close there now. Stretch out your hand, Collins. Can you feel a
shelf of rock?"

"It's just in front of me," was the stifled answer.

"That's for the stuff. Down with it."

For a few moments Collins was busy. Then, with a little gasp, he gripped
Granet's arm. His voice, shaking with nervous repression, was still almost
hysterical.

"They're coming, Granet! My God, they're coming!"

Both men turned seaward. Far away in the clouds, it seemed, they could hear a
faint humming, some new sound, something mechanical in its regular beating,
yet with clamorous throatiness of some human force cleaving its way through
the resistless air. With every second it grew louder. The men stood
clutching one another.

"Have you got the fuse ready? They must hear it in a moment." Granet
muttered.

Collins assented silently. The reverberations became louder and louder. Soon
the air was full of echoes. From far away inland dogs were barking, from a
farm somewhere the other side of the road they heard the shout of a single
voice.

"Now," Granet whispered.

Collins leaned forward. The fuse in his hand touched the dark substance which
he had spread out upon the rock. In a moment a strange, unearthly, green
light seemed to roll back the darkness. The house, the workshop, the trees,
the slowly flowing sea, their own ghastly faces--everything stood revealed in
a blaze of hideous, awful light. For a moment they forgot themselves, they
forgot the miracle they had brought to pass. Their eyes were rivetted
skyward. High above them, something blacker than the heavens themselves,
stupendous, huge, seemed suddenly to assume to itself shape. The roar of
machinery was clearly audible. From the house came the mingled shouting of
many voices. Something dropped into the sea a hundred yards away with a
screech and a hiss, and a geyser-like fountain leapt so high that the spray
reached them. Then there was a sharper sound as a rifle bullet whistled by.

"My God!" Granet exclaimed. "It's time we were out of this, Collins!"

He seized his scull. Even at that moment there was a terrific explosion. A
stream of lurid fire seemed to leap from the corner of the house, the wall
split and fell outwards. And then there came another sound, hideous, sickly,
a sound Granet had heard before, the sound of a rifle bullet cutting its way
through flesh, followed by an inhuman cry. For a moment Collins' arms whirled
around him. Then, with no other sound save that one cry, he fell forward and
disappeared. For a single second Granet leaned over the side of the boat as
though to drive after him. Then came another roar. The sand flew up in a
blinding storm, the whole of the creek was suddenly a raging torrent. The
boat was swung on a precipitous mountain of salt water and as quickly
capsized. Granet, breathless for a moment and half stunned, found his way
somehow to the side of the marshland, and from there stumbled his way towards
the road. The house behind him was on fire, the air seemed filled with hoarse
shoutings. He turned and ran for the spot where he had left the car. Once he
fell into a salt water pool and came out wet through to the waist. In the
end, however, he reached the bank, clambered over it and slipped down into the
road. Then a light was flashed into his eyes and a bayonet was rattled at his
feet. There were a couple of soldiers in charge of his car.

"Hands up!" was the hoarse order.

Granet calmly flashed his own electric torch. There were at least a dozen
soldiers standing around, and a little company were hurrying down from the
gates. He switched off his light almost immediately.

"Is any one hurt?" he asked.

There was a dead silence. He felt his arms seized on either side.

"The captain's coming down the road," one of the men said. "Lay on to him,
Tim!"

CHAPTER XXII

Granet sauntered in to breakfast a few minutes late on the following morning.
A little volley of questions and exclamations reached him as he stood by the
sideboard.

"Heard about the Zeppelin raid?"

"They say there's a bomb on the ninth green!"

"Market Burnham Hall is burnt to the ground!"

Granet sighed as he crossed the room and took his seat at the table.

"If you fellows hadn't slept like oxen last night," he remarked, "you'd have
known a lot more about it. I saw the whole show."

"Nonsense!" Major Harrison exclaimed.

"Tell us all about it?" young Anselman begged.

"I heard the thing just as I was beginning to undress," Granet explained. "I
rushed downstairs and found Collins out in the garden. . . . Where the devil
is Collins, by-the-bye?"

They glanced at his vacant place.

"Not down yet. Go on."

"Well, we could hear the vibration like anything, coming from over the marsh
there. I got the car out and we were no sooner on the road than I could see
it distinctly, right above us--a huge, cigar-shaped thing. We raced along
after it, along the road towards Market Burnham. Just before it reached the
Hall it seemed to turn inland and then come back again. We pulled up to watch
it and Collins jumped out. He said he'd go as far as the Hall and warn them.
I sat in the car, watching. She came right round and seemed to hover over
those queer sort of outbuildings there are at Market Burnham. All at once the
bombs began to drop."

"What are they like?" Geoffrey Anselman exclaimed.

Granet poured out his coffee carefully.

"I've seen 'em before--plenty of them, too," he remarked, "but they did rain
them down. Then all of a sudden there was a sort of glare--I don't know what
happened. It was just as though some one had lit one of those coloured
lights. The Hall was just as clearly visible as at noonday. I could see the
men running about, shouting, and the soldiers tumbling out of their quarters.
All the time the bombs were coming down like hail and a corner of the Hall was
in flames. Then the lighted stuff, whatever it was, burnt out and the
darkness seemed as black as pitch. I hung around for some time, looking for
Collins. Then I went up to the house to help them extinguish the fire. I
didn't get back till four o'clock."

"What about Collins?" young Anselman asked. "I was playing him at golf."

"Better send up and see," Granet proposed. "I waited till I couldn't stick it
any longer."

They sent a servant up. The reply came back quickly--Mr. Collins bed had not
been slept in. Granet frowned a little.

"I suppose he'll think I let him down," he said. "I waited at least an hour
for him."

"Was any one hurt by the bombs?" Geoffrey Anselman inquired.

"No one seemed to be much the worse," Granet replied. "I didn't think of
anything of that sort in connection with Collins, though. Perhaps he might
have got hurt."

"We'll all go over and have a look for him this afternoon if he hasn't turned
up," Anselman suggested. "What about playing me a round of golf this
morning?"

"Suit me all right," Granet agreed. "I'd meant to lay up because of my arm,
but it's better this morning. We'll start early and get back for the papers."

They motored down to the club-house and played their round. It was a
wonderful spring morning, with a soft west wind blowing from the land. Little
patches of sea lavender gave purple colour to the marshland. The creeks,
winding their way from the sea to the village, shone like quicksilver beneath
the vivid sunshine. It was a morning of utter and complete peace. Granet
notwithstanding a little trouble with his arm, played carefully and well.
When at last they reached the eighteenth green, he hold a wonderful curly putt
for the hole and the match.

"A great game," his cousin declared, as they left the green. "Who the devil
are these fellows?"

There were two soldiers standing at the gate, and a military motor-car drawn
up by the side of the road. An orderly stepped forward and addressed Granet.

"Captain Granet?" he asked, saluting.

Granet nodded and stretched out his hand for the note. The fingers which drew
it from the envelope were perfectly steady, he even lifted his head for a
moment to look at a lark just overhead. Yet the few hastily scrawled lines
were like a message of fate:--

The officer in command at Market Burnham Hall would be obliged if Captain
Granet would favour him with an immediate interview, with reference to the
events of last night.

"Do you mean that you want me to go at once, before luncheon?" he asked the
orderly.

The man pointed to the car.

"My instructions were to take you back at once, sir."

"Come and have a drink first, at any rate," Geoffrey Anselman insisted.

The orderly shook his head, the two soldiers were barring the gateway.

"Some one from the War Office has arrived and is waiting to speak to Captain
Granet," he announced.

"We're all coming over after lunch," young Anselman protested. "Wouldn't that
do?"

The man made no answer. Granet, with a shrug of the shoulders, stepped into
the motor-car. The two soldiers mounted motor-cycles and the little cavalcade
turned away. Granet made a few efforts at conversation with his companion,
but, meeting with no response, soon relapsed into silence. In less than
twenty minutes the car was slowing down before the approach to the Hall. The
lane was crowded with villagers and people from the neighbouring farmhouses,
who were all kept back, however, by a little cordon of soldiers. Granet,
closely attended by his escort, made his way slowly into the avenue and up
towards the house. A corner of the left wing of the building was in ruins,
blackened and still smouldering, and there was a great hole in the sand-blown
lawn, where a bomb had apparently fallen. A soldier admitted them at the
front entrance and his guide led him across the hall and into a large room on
the other side of the house, an apartment which seemed to be half library,
half morning-room. Sir Meyville and a man in uniform were talking together
near the window. They turned around at Granet's entrance and he gave a little
start. For the first time a thrill of fear chilled him, his self-confidence
was suddenly dissipated. The man who stood watching him with cold scrutiny
was the one man on earth whom he feared--Surgeon Major Thomson.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was a queer little gathering in the drawing-room of Market Burnham Hall,
queer and in a sense ominous. Two soldiers guarded the door. Another one
stood with his back to the wide-flung window, the sunlight flashing upon his
drawn bayonet. Granet, although he looked about him for a moment curiously,
carried himself with ease and confidence.

"How do you do, Sir Meyville?" he said. "How are you, Thomson?"

Sir Meyville, who was in a state of great excitement, took absolutely no
notice of the young man's greeting. Thomson pointed to a chair, in which
Granet at once seated himself.

"I have sent for you, Captain Granet," the former began, "to ask you certain
questions with reference to the events of last night."

"Delighted to tell you anything I can," Granet replied. "Isn't this a little
out of your line, though, Thomson?"

Sir Meyville suddenly leaned forward.

"That is the young man," he declared. "I took him to be the officer in
command here and I showed him over my workshop. Quite a mistake--absolutely a
wrong impression!"

"It was a mistake for which you could scarcely hold me responsible," Granet
protested, "and you must really excuse me if I fail to see the connection.
Perhaps you will tell me, Major Thomson, what I am here for?"

Major Thomson seated himself before the desk and leaned a little back in his
chair.

"We sent for you," he said, "because we are looking for two men who lit the
magnesium light which directed the Zeppelin last night to this locality. One
of them lies on the lawn there, with a bullet through his brain. We are still
looking for the other."

"Do you imagine that I can be of any assistance to you?" Granet asked.

"That is our impression," Major Thomson admitted. "Perhaps you will be so
good as to tell us what you were doing here last night?"

"Certainly," Granet replied. "About half-past ten last night I thought I
heard the engine of an airship. We all went out on the lawn but could see
nothing. However, I took that opportunity to get my car ready in case there
was any excitement going. Later on, as I was on my way upstairs, I distinctly
heard the sound once more. I went out, started my car, and drove down the
lane. It seemed to be coming in this direction so I followed along, pulled up
short of the house, climbed on the top of the bank and saw that extraordinary
illumination from the marshland on the other side. I saw a man in a small
boat fall back as though he were shot. A moment or two later I returned to my
car and was accosted by two soldiers, to whom I gave my name and address.
That is really all I know about the matter."

Major Thomson nodded.

"You had only just arrived, then, when the bombs were dropped?"

"I pulled up just before the illumination," Granet asserted.

Thomson looked at him thoughtfully.

"I am going to make a remark, Captain Granet," he said, "upon which you can
comment or not, as you choose. Was not your costume last night rather a
singular one for the evening? You say that you were on your way upstairs to
undress when you heard the Zeppelin. Do you wear rubber shoes and a Norfolk
jacket for dinner?"

Granet for a moment bit his lip.

"I laid out those things in case there was anything doing," he said. "As I
told you, I felt sure that I had heard an airship earlier in the evening, and
I meant to try and follow it if I heard it again.

There was a brief silence. Granet lounged a little back in his chair, but
though his air of indifference was prefect, a sickening foreboding was
creeping in upon him. He was conscious of failure, of blind, idiotic folly.
Never before had he been guilty of such miserable short-sightedness. He
fought desperately against the toils which he felt were gradually closing in
upon him. There must be some way out!

"Captain Granet," he questioner continued, in his calm, emotionless tone,
"according to your story you changed your clothes and reached here at the same
time as the Zeppelin, after having heard its approach. It is four miles and a
half to the Dormy House Club, and that Zeppelin must have been travelling at
the rate of at least sixty miles an hour. Is your car capable of miracles?"

"It is capable of sixty miles an hour," Granet declared.

"Perhaps I may spare you the trouble," Thomson proceeded drily, "of further
explanations, Captain Granet, when I tell you that your car was observed by
one of the sentries quite a quarter of an hour before the arrival of the
Zeppelins and the lighting of that flare. Your statements, to put it mildly,
are irreconcilable with the facts of the case. I must ask you once more if
you have any other explanation to give as to your movements last night?"

"What other explanation can I give?" Granet asked, his brain working fiercely.
"I have told you the truth. What more can I say?"

"You have told me," Major Thomson went on, and his voice seemed like the voice
of fate, "that you arrived here in hot haste simultaneously with the lighting
of that flare and the dropping of the bombs. Not only one of the sentries on
guard here, but two other people have given evidence that your car was out
there in the lane for at least a quarter of an hour previous to the happenings
of which I have just spoken. For the last time, Captain Granet, I must ask
you whether you wish to amend your explanation?"

There was a little movement at the further end of the room. A curtain was
drawn back and Isabel Worth came slowly towards them. She stood there, the
curtains on either side of her, ghastly pale, her hands clasped in front of
her, twitching nervously.

"I am very sorry," she said. "This is all my fault."

They stared at her in amazement. Only Granet, with an effort, kept his face
expressionless. Sir Meyville began to mutter to himself.

"God bless my soul!" he mumbled. "Isabel, what do you want, girl? Can't you
see that we are engaged?"

She took no notice of him. She turned appealingly towards Major Thomson.

"Can you send the soldiers away for a moment?" she begged. "I don't think
that they will be needed."

Major Thomson gave a brief order and the men left the room. Isabel came a
little nearer to the table. She avoided looking at Granet.

"I am very sorry indeed," she went on, "if anything I have done has caused all
this trouble. Captain Granet came down here partly to play golf, partly at my
invitation. He was here yesterday afternoon, as my father knows. Before he
left--I asked him to come over last night."

There was a breathless silence. Isabel was standing at the end of the table,
her fingers still clasped nervously together, a spot of intense colour in her
cheeks. She kept her eyes turned sedulously away from Granet. Sir Meyville
gripped her by the shoulder.

"What do you mean, girl?" he demanded harshly. "What do you mean by all this
rubbish? Speak out."

Granet looked up for a moment.

"Don't," he begged. "I can clear myself, Miss Worth, if any one is mad enough
to have suspicions about me. I should never--"

"The truth may just as well be told," she interrupted. "There is nothing to
be ashamed of. It is hideously dull down here, and the life my father has
asked me to lead for the last few months has been intolerable. I never sleep,
and I invited Captain Granet to come over here at twelve o'clock last night
and take me for a motor ride. I was dressed, meaning to go, and Captain
Granet came to fetch me. It turned out to be impossible because of all the
new sentries about the place, but that is why Captain Granet was here, and
that," she concluded, turning to Major Thomson, "is why, I suppose, he felt
obliged to tell you what was not the truth. It has been done before."

There was a silence which seemed composed of many elements. Sir Meyville
Worth stood with his eyes fixed upon his daughter and an expression of blank,
uncomprehending dismay in his features. Granet, a frown upon his forehead,
was looking towards the floor. Thomson, with the air of seeing nobody, was
studying them all in turn. It was he who spoke first.

"As you justly remark, Miss Worth," he observed, "this sort of thing has been
done before. We will leave it there for the present. Will you come this way
with me, if you please, Captain Granet? I won't trouble you, Miss Worth, or
you, Sir Meyville. You might not like what we are going to see."

Granet rose at once to his feet.

"Of course, I will come wherever you like," he assented.

The two men passed together side by side, in momentous silence, across the
stone hall, out of the house, and round the back of the garden to a wooden
shed, before which was posted a sentry. The man stood on one side to let them
pass. On the bare stone floor inside was stretched the dead body of Collins.
The salt water was still oozing from his clothes and limbs, running away in
little streams. There was a small blue hole in the middle of his forehead.

"This, apparently," Thomson said, "is the man who lit the magnesium light
which showed the Zeppelin where to throw her bombs. The thing was obviously
prearranged. Can you identify him?"

"Identify him?" Granet exclaimed. "Why, I was playing bowls with him
yesterday afternoon. He is a Glasgow merchant named Collins, and a very fine
golf player. He is staying at the Dormy House Club."

"He has also another claim to distinction," Major Thomson remarked drily, "for
he is the man who fired those lights. The sergeant who shot him fancied that
he heard voices on the creek, and crept up to the wall just before the flare
came. The sergeant, I may add, is under the impression that there were two
men in the boat."

Granet shook his head dubiously.

"I know nothing whatever of the man or his movements," he declared, "beyond
what I have told you. I have scarcely spoken a dozen words to him in my life,
and never before our chance meeting at the Dormy House."

"You do not, for instance, happen to know how he came here from the Dormy
House?"

"If you mean did he come in my car," Granet answered easily, "please let me
assure you that he did not. My errand here last night was indiscreet enough,
but I certainly shouldn't have brought another man, especially a stranger,
with me."

"Thank you," Major Thomson concluded, "that is all I have to say to you for
the present."

"Has there been much damage done?"  Granet inquired.

"Very little."

They had reached the corner of the avenue. Granet glanced down towards the
road.

"I presume," he remarked, "that I am at liberty to depart?"

Thomson gave a brief order to the soldier who had been attending them.

"You will find the car in which you came waiting to take you back, Captain
Granet, he announced.

The two men had paused. Granet was on the point of departure. With the
passing of his sudden apprehension of danger, his curiosity was awakened.

"Do you mind telling me, Major Thomson," he asked, "how it is that you,
holding, I presume, a medical appointment, were selected to conduct an inquiry
like this? I have voluntarily submitted myself to your questioning, but if I
had had anything to conceal I might have been inclined to dispute your
authority."

Thomson's face was immovable. He simply pointed to the gate at the end of the
avenue.

"If it had been necessary, Captain Granet," he said coldly, "I should have
been able to convince you that I was acting under authority. As it is, I wish
you good-morning."

Granet hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and
turned away.

"Good-morning, Major!"

He made his way down to the lane, which was still crowded with villagers and
loungers. He was received with a shower of questions as he climbed into the
car.

"Not much damage done that I can hear," he told them all. "The corner of the
house caught fire and the lawn looks like a sand-pit."

He was driven in silence back to the Dormy House. When he arrived there the
place was deserted. The other men were lunching at the golf club. He made
his way slowly to the impromptu shed which served for a garage. His own car
was standing there. He looked all around to make sure that he was absolutely
alone. Then he lifted up the cushion by the driving-seat. Carefully folded
and arranged in the corner were the horn-rimmed spectacles and the silk
handkerchief of the man who was lying at Market Burnham with a bullet through
his forehead.

CHAPTER XXIV

Mr. Gordon Jones rose to his feet. It had been an interesting, in some
respects a momentous interview. He glanced around the plain but handsomely
furnished office, a room which betrayed so few evidences of the world-flung
power of its owner.

"After all, Sir Alfred," he remarked, smiling, "I am not sure that it is
Downing Street which rules. We can touch our buttons and move armies and
battleships across the face of the earth. You pull down your ledger, sign
your name, and you can strike a blow as deadly as any we can conceive."

The banker smiled.

"Let us be thankful, then," he said, "that the powers we wield are linked
together in the great cause."

Mr. Gordon Jones hesitated.

"Such things, I know, are little to you, Sir Alfred," he continued, "but at
the same time I want you to believe that his Majesty's Government will not be
unmindful of your help at this juncture. To speak of rewards at such a time
is perhaps premature. I know that ordinary honours do not appeal to you, yet
it has been suggested to me by a certain person that I should assure you of
the country's gratitude. In plain words, there is nothing you may ask for
which it would not be our pleasure and privilege to give you."

Sir Alfred bowed slightly.

"You are very kind," he said. "Later on, perhaps, one may reflect. At
present there seems to be only one stern duty before us, and for that one
needs no reward."

The two men parted. Sir Alfred rose from the chair in front of his desk and
threw himself into the easy-chair which his guest had been occupying. A ray
of city sunshine found its way through the tangle of tall buildings on the
other side of the street, lay in a zigzag path across his carpet, and touched
the firm lines of his thoughtful face. He sat there, slowly tapping the sides
of the chair with his pudgy fingers. So a great soldier might have sat,
following out the progress of his armies in different countries, listening to
the roar of their guns, watching their advance, their faltering, their success
and their failures. Sir Alfred's vision was in a sense more sordid in many
ways more complicated, yet it too, had its dramatic side. He looked at the
money-markets of the world, he saw exchanges rise and fall. He saw in the dim
vista no khaki-clad army with flashing bayonets, but a long, thin line of
black-coated men with sallow faces, clutching their money-bags.

There was a knock at the door and his secretary entered.

"Captain Granet has been here for some time, sir," he announced softly.

The banker came back to the present. He woke up, indeed, with a little start.

"Show my nephew in at once," he directed. "I shall be engaged with him for at
least a quarter of an hour. Kindly go round to the Bank of England and
arrange for an interview with Mr. Williams for three o'clock this afternoon."

The clerk silently withdrew. Granet entered, a few minutes later. The banker
greeted him pleasantly.

"Well, Ronnie," he exclaimed, "I thought that you were going to be down in
Norfolk for a week! Come in. Bring your chair up to my side, so. This is
one of my deaf mornings."

Granet silently obeyed. Sir Alfred glanced around the room. There was no
possible hiding-place, not the slightest chance of being overheard.

"What about it, Ronnie?"

"We did our share," Granet answered. "Collins was there at the Dormy House
Club. We got the signal and we lit the flare. They came down to within two
or three hundred feet, and they must have thrown twenty bombs, at least. They
damaged the shed but missed the workshop. The house caught fire, but they
managed to put that out."

"You escaped all right, I'm glad to see?"

"They got Collins," Granet said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. "He
was shot by my side. They caught me, too. I've been in a few tight corners
but nothing tighter than that. Who do you think was sent down from the War
Office to hold an inquiry? Thomson--that fellow Thomson!"

The banker frowned.

"Do you mean the man who is the head of the hospitals?"

"Supposed to be," Granet answered grimly. "I am beginning to wonder--Tell me,
you haven't heard anything more about him, have you?"

"Not a word," Sir Alfred replied. "Why should I?"

"Nothing except that I have an uncomfortable feeling about him," Granet went
on. "I wish I felt sure that he was just what he professes to be. He is the
one man who seems to suspect me. If it hadn't been for Isabel Worth, I was
done for--finished--down at that wretched hole! He had me where I couldn't
move. The girl lied and got me out of it."

Sir Alfred drummed for a moment with his fingers upon the table.

"I am not sure that these risks are worth while for you, Ronnie," he said.

The young man shrugged his shoulders. His face certainly seemed to have grown
thinner during the last few days.

"I don't mind it so much abroad," he declared. "It seems a different thing
there, somehow. But over here it's all wrong; it's the atmosphere, I suppose.
And that fellow Thomson means mischief--I'm sure of it."

"Is there any reason for ill-feeling between you two?" the banker inquired.

Granet nodded.

"You've hit it, sir."

"Miss Conyers, eh?"

The young man's face underwent a sudden change.

"Yes," he confessed. "If I hadn't begun this, if I hadn't gone so far into it
that no other course was possible, I think that I should have been content to
be just what I seem to be--because of her."

Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair. He was looking at his nephew as a man of
science might have looked at some interesting specimen.

"Well," he said, "I suppose you simply confirm the experience of the ages,
but, frankly, you amaze me. You are moving amongst the big places of life,
you are with those who are making history, and you would be content to give
the whole thing up. For what? You would become a commonplace, easy-going
young animal of a British soldier, for the sake of the affection of a
good-looking, well-bred, commonplace British young woman. I don't understand
you, Ronald. You have the blood of empire-makers in your veins. Your
education and environment have developed an outward resemblance to the thing
you profess to be, but behind--don't you fell the grip of the other things?"

"I feel them, right enough," Granet replied. "I have felt them for the last
seven or eight years. But I am feeling something else, too, something which I
dare say you never felt, something which I have never quite believed in."

Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair.

"In a way," he admitted, "this is disappointing. You are right. I have never
felt the call of those other things. When I was a young man, I was frivolous
simply when I felt inclined to turn from the big things of life for purposes
of relaxation. When an alliance was suggested to me, I was content to accept
it, but thank heavens I have been Oriental enough to keep women in my life
where they belong. I am disappointed in you, Ronnie."

The young man shrugged his shoulders.

"I haven't flinched," he said.

"No, but the soft spot's there," was the grim reply. "However, let that go.
Tell me why you came up? Wasn't it better to have stayed down at Brancaster
for a little longer?"

"Perhaps," his nephew assented. "My arm came on a little rocky and I had to
chuck golf. Apart from that, I wasn't altogether comfortable about things at
Market Burnham. I was obliged to tell Thomson that I saw nothing of Collins
that night but they know at the Dormy House Club that he started with me in
the car and has never been heard of since. Then there was the young woman."

"Saved you by a lie, didn't she?" the banker remarked. "That may be awkward
later on."

"I'm sick of my own affairs," Granet declared gloomily. "Is there anything
fresh up here at all?"

Sir Alfred frowned slightly.

"Nothing very much," he said. "At the same time, there are distinct
indications of a change which I don't like. With certain statesmen here at
the top of the tree, it was perfectly easy for me to carry out any schemes
which I thought necessary. During the last few weeks, however, there has been
a change. Nominally, things are the same. Actually, I seem to find another
hand at work, another hand which works with the censorship, too. One of my
very trusted agents in Harwich made the slightest slip the other day. A few
weeks ago, he would either have been fined twenty pounds or interned. Do you
know what happened to him on Wednesday? Of course you don't he was arrested
at one o'clock and shot in half an hour. Then you saw the papers this
morning? All sailings between here and a certain little spot we know of have
been stopped without a moment's warning. I am compelled to pause in several
most interesting schemes."

"Nothing for me, I suppose?" Granet asked, a little nervously.

Sir Alfred looked at him.

"Not for the moment," he replied, "but there will be very soon. Take hold of
yourself Ronnie. Don't look downwards so much. You and I are walking in the
clouds. It is almost as bad to falter as to slip. Confess--you've been
afraid."

"I have," Granet admitted, "not afraid of death but afraid of what might
follow upon discovery. I am half inclined, if just one thing in the world
came my way, to sail for New York to-morrow and start again."

"When those fears come to you," Sir Alfred continued slowly, "consider me. I
run a greater risk than you. There are threads from this office stretching to
many corners of England, to many corners of America, to most cities of Europe.
If a man with brains should seize upon any one of them, he might follow it
backwards--even here."

Sir Alfred touched his chest for a moment. Then his hand dropped to his side
and he proceeded.

"For twenty-eight years I have ruled the money-markets of the world. No
Cabinet Council is held in this country at which my influence is not
represented. The Ministers come to me one by one for help and advice. I
represent the third great force of war, and there isn't a single member of the
present Government who doesn't look upon me as the most important person in
the country. Yet I, too, have enemies, Ronnie. There is the halfpenny Press.
They'd give a million for the chance that may come at any day. They'd print
my downfall in blacker lines than the declaration of war. They'd shriek over
my ruin with a more brazen-throated triumph even than they would greet the
heralds of peace. And the threads are there, Ronald. Sometimes I feel one
shiver a little. Sometimes I have to stretch out my arm and brush too curious
an inquirer into the place where curiosity ends. I sit and watch and I am
well served. There are men this morning at Buckingham Palace with a V.C. to
be pinned upon their breast, who faced dangers for ten minutes, less than I
face day and night."

Granet rose to his feet.

"For a moment," he exclaimed, "I had forgotten!. . . Tell me," he added, with
sudden vigour, "what have we don't it for? You made your great name in
England, you were Eton and Oxford. Why is it that when the giant struggle
comes it should be Germany who governs your hear, it should be Germany who
calls even to me?"

Sir Alfred held out his hand. His eye had caught the clock.

"Ronnie," he said, "have you ever wondered why in a flock of sheep every lamb
knows its mother? Germany was the mother of our stock. Birth, life and
education count for nothing when the great days come, when the mother voice
speaks. It isn't that we are false to England, it is that we are true to our
own. You must go now, Ronnie! I have an appointment."

Granet walked out to the street a little dazed, and called for a taxi.

"I suppose that must be it," he muttered to himself.

CHAPTER XXV

Geraldine welcomed her unexpected visitor that afternoon cordially enough but
a little shyly.

"I thought that you were going to stay at Brancaster for a week," she
remarked, as they shook hands.

"We meant to stay longer," Granet admitted, "but things went a little wrong.
First of all there was this Zeppelin raid. Then my arm didn't go very well.
Altogether our little excursion fizzled out and I came back last night."

"Did you see anything of the raid?" Geraldine inquired eagerly.

"Rather more than I wanted," he answered grimly. "I was motoring along the
road at the time, and I had to attend a perfect court martial next day, with
your friend Thomson in the chair. Can you tell me, Miss Conyers," he
continued, watching her closely, "how it is that a medical major who is
inspector of hospitals, should be sent down from the War Office to hold an
inquiry upon that raid?"

"Was Hugh really there?" she asked in a puzzled manner.

"He was, and very officially," Granet replied. "If it weren't that I had
conclusive evidence to prove what I was doing there, he seemed rather set on
getting me into trouble."

"Hugh is always very fair," she said a little coldly.

"You can't solve my puzzle for me, then?" he persisted.

"What puzzle?"

"Why an inspector of hospitals should hold an inquiry upon a Zeppelin raid?"

"I'm afraid I cannot," she admitted. "Hugh certainly seems to have become a
most mysterious person, but then, as you know, I haven't seen quite so much of
him lately. Your change, Captain Granet, doesn't seem to have done you much
good. Has your wound been troubling you?"

He rose abruptly and stood before her.

"Do you care whether my wound is troubling me or not?" he asked. "Do you care
anything at all about me?"

There was a moment's silence.

"I care very much," she confessed.

He seemed suddenly a changed person. The lines which had certainly appeared
in his face during the last few days, become more noticeable. He leaned
towards her eagerly.

"Miss Conyers," he went on, "Geraldine, I want you to care--enough for the big
things. Don't interrupt me, please. Listen to what I have to say. Somehow
or other, the world has gone amiss with me lately. They won't have me back,
my place has been filled up, I can't get any fighting. They've shelved me at
the War Office; they talk about a home adjutancy. I can't stick it, I have
lived amongst the big things too long. I'm sick of waiting about, doing
nothing--sick to death. I want to get away. There's some work I could do in
America. You understand?"

"Not in the least," Geraldine told him frankly.

"It's my fault," he declared. "The words all seem to be tumbling out anyhow
and I don't know how to put them in the right order. Can't you see that I
love you, Geraldine? I want you to be my wife, and I want to get right away
as quickly as ever I can. Why not America? Why couldn't we be married this
week and get away from everybody?"

She looked at him in sheer amazement, amazement tempered just a little with a
sort of tremulous uncertainty.

"But, Captain Granet," she exclaimed, "you can't be serious! You couldn't
possibly think of leaving England now."

"Why not?" he protested. "They won't let me fight again. I couldn't stand
the miserable routine of home soldiering. I'd like to get away and forget it
all."

"I am sure you are not in earnest," she said quietly. "No Englishman could
feel like that."

"He could if he cared for you," Granet insisted. "I'm afraid of everything
here, afraid that Thomson will come back and take you away, afraid of all
sorts of hideous things happening during the next few months."

"You mustn't talk like this, please," she begged. "You know as well as I do
that neither you nor I could turn our backs on England just now and be happy."

He opened his lips to speak but stopped short. It was obvious that she was
deeply in earnest.

"And as for the other thing you spoke of," she continued, "please won't you do
as I beg you and not refer to it again for the present? Perhaps," she added,
"when the war is over we may speak of it, but just now everything is so
confused. I, too, seem to have lost my bearings. . . .You know that I am
going out to Boulogne in a few days with Lady Headley's hospital? Don't look
so frightened. I am not an amateur nurse, I can assure you. I have all my
certificates."

"To Boulogne?" he muttered. "You are going to leave London?"

She nodded.

"Major Thomson arranged it for me, a few days ago. We may meet there at any
time," she added, smiling. "I am perfectly certain that the War Office will
find you something abroad very soon."

For a moment that queer look of boyish strength which had first attracted her,
reasserted itself. His teeth came together.

"Yes," he agreed, "there's work for me somewhere. I'll find it. Only--"

She checked him hurriedly.

"And I am quite sure," she interrupted, "that when you are yourself again you
will agree with me. These are not the times for us to have any selfish
thoughts, are they?"

"Until a few weeks ago," he told her, "I thought of nothing but the war and my
work in it--until you came, that is."

She held out her hands to check him. Her eyes were eloquent.

"Please remember," she begged, "that it is too soon. I can't bear to have you
talk to me like that. Afterwards--"

"There will be no afterwards for me!" he exclaimed bitterly.

A shade of surprise became mingled with her agitation.

"You mustn't talk like that," she protested, "you with your splendid courage
and opportunities! Think what you have done already. England wants the best
of her sons to-day. Can't you be content to give that and to wait? We have
so much gratitude in our hearts, we weak women, for those who are fighting our
battle."

Her words failed to inspire him. He took her hand and lifted her fingers
deliberately to his lips.

"I was foolish," he groaned, "to think that you could feel as I do.
Good-bye!"

Geraldine was alone when her mother came into the room a few minutes later.
Lady Conyers was looking a little fluttered and anxious.

"Was that Captain Granet?" she asked.

Geraldine nodded. Lady Conyers anxiety deepened.

"Well?"

"I have sent him away," Geraldine said quietly, "until the end of the war."

Granet brought his car to a standstill outside the portals of that very august
club in Pall Mall. The hall-porter took in his name and a few minutes his
uncle joined him in the strangers' room.

"Back again so soon, Ronnie?"

Granet nodded.

"America's off," he announced shortly. "I thought I'd better let you know.
It must be the whole thing now."

Sir Alfred was silent for a moment.

"Very well," he said at last, "only remember this, my boy--there must be no
more risks. You've been sailing quite close enough to the wind."

"Did you call at the War Office?" Granet asked quickly.

His uncle assented.

"I did and I saw General Brice. He admitted in confidence that they weren't
very keen about your rejoining. Nothing personal," he went on quickly,
"nothing serious, that is to say. There is a sort of impression out there
that you've brought them bad luck."

Granet shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said, "they know their own business best. What I am afraid of is
being saddled with some rotten home duty."

"You need not be afraid of that any more, Ronnie," his uncle told him calmly.

Granet turned quickly around.

"Do you mean that they don't want to give me anything at all?" he demanded
anxiously.

Sir Alfred shook his head.

"You are too impetuous, Ronnie. They're willing enough to give you a home
command, but I have asked that it should be left over for a little time, so as
to leave you free."

"You have something in your mind, then--something definite?"

Sir Alfred looked out of the window for a moment. Then he laid his hand upon
his nephew's shoulder.

"I think I can promise you, Ronnie," he said seriously, "that before many days
have passed you shall have all the occupation you want."

CHAPTER XXVI

Surgeon-Major Thomson reeled for a moment and caught at the paling by his
side. Then he recovered himself almost as quickly, and, leaning forward,
gazed eagerly at the long, grey racing-car which was already passing
Buckingham Palace and almost out of sight in the slight morning fog. There
was a very small cloud of white smoke drifting away into space, and a faint
smell of gunpowder in the air. He felt his cheek and, withdrawing his
fingers, gazed at them with a little nervous laugh--they were wet with blood.

He looked up and down the broad pathway. For nine o'clock in the morning the
Birdcage Walk was marvellously deserted. A girl, however, who had been
driving a small car very slowly on the other side of the road, suddenly swung
across, drew up by the kerb and leaned towards him.

"Hugh--Major Thomson, what is the matter with you?"

He dabbed his cheek with his pocket handkerchief.

"Nothing," he answered simply.

"Don't be silly!" she exclaimed. "I felt certain that I heard a shot just
now, and I saw you reel and spin round for a moment. And your cheek,
too--it's all over blood!"

He smiled.

"A bullet did come my way and just graze my cheek," he admitted. "Most
extraordinary thing. I wonder whether one of those fellows in the Park had an
accident with his rifle."

He glanced thoughtfully across towards where a number of khaki-clad figures
were dimly visible behind the railings. Geraldine looked at him severely.

"Of course," she began, "if you really think that I don't know the difference
between the report of a pistol and a rifle shot--"

He interrupted her.

"I was wrong," he confessed. "Forgive me. You see, my head was a little
turned. Some one did deliberately fire at me, and I believe it was from a
grey racing-car. I couldn't see who was driving it and it was out of sight
almost at once."

"But I never heard of such a thing!" she exclaimed. "Why on earth should they
fire at you? You haven't any enemies, have you?"

"Not that I know of," he assured her.

She stepped from the car and came lightly over to his side.

"Take your handkerchief away," she ordered. "Don't be foolish. You forget
that I am a certificated nurse."

He raised his handkerchief and she looked for a moment at the long scar. Her
face grew serious.

"Another half-inch," she murmured,--"Hugh, what an abominable thing! A
deliberate attempt at murder here, at nine o'clock in the morning, in the
Park! I can't understand it."

"Well, I've been under fire before," he remarked, smiling.

"Get into my car at once," she directed. "I'll drive you to a chemist's and
put something on that. You can't go about as you are, and it will have healed
up then in a day or two."

He obeyed at once and she drove off.

"Of course, I'm a little bewildered about it still," she went on. "I suppose
you ought to go to the police-station. It was really a deliberate attempt at
assassination, wasn't it? If you had been--"

She paused and he completed her sentence with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"If I had been a person of importance, eh? Well, you see, even I must have
been in somebody's way."

She drove in silence for some little distance.

"Hugh," she asked abruptly, "why did the War Office send you down to Market
Burnham after that Zeppelin raid?"

His face was suddenly immovable. He turned his head very slightly.

"Did Granet tell you that?"

She nodded.

"Captain Granet came to see me yesterday afternoon. He seemed as much
surprised as I was. You were a little hard on him, weren't you?"

"I think not!"

"But why were you sent down?" she persisted. "I can't imagine what you have
to do with a Zeppelin raid."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I really don't think it is worth while your bothering about the bandage," he
said.

"Hugh, you make me so angry!" she exclaimed. "Of course, you may say that I
haven't the right to ask, but still I can't see why you should be so
mysterious. . . . Here's the chemist's. Now come inside with me, please."

He followed her obediently into the shop at the top of Trafalgar Square. She
dressed his wound deftly and adjusted a bandage around his head.

"If you keep that on all day," she said, "I think--but I forgot. I was
treating you like an ordinary patient. Don't laugh at me, sir. I am sure
none of your professional nurses could have tied that up any better."

"Of course they couldn't," he agreed. "By-the-bye, have you obtained your
papers for Boulogne yet?"

"I expect to be going next week. Lady Headley promised to let me know this
afternoon. Now I'll take you down to the War Office, if you like."

He took his place once more by her side.

"Hugh," she inquired, "have you any idea who fired that shot?"

"None whatever," he replied, "no definite idea, that is to say. It was some
one who as driving a low, grey car. Do we know any one who possesses such a
thing?"

She frowned. The exigencies of the traffic prevented her glancing towards
him.

"Only Captain Granet," she remarked, "and I suppose even your dislike of him
doesn't go so far as to suggest that he is likely to play the would-be
murderer in broad daylight."

"It certainly does seem a rather rash and unnecessary proceeding," he
assented, "but the fact remains that some one thought it worth while."

"Some one with a grudge against the Chief Inspector of Hospitals," she
observed drily.

He did not reply. They drew up outside the War Office.

"Thank you very much," he said, "for playing the Good Samaritan."

She made a little grimace. Suddenly her manner became more earnest. She laid
her fingers upon his arm as he stood on the pavement by her side.

"Hugh," she said, "before you go let me tell you something. I think that the
real reason why I lost some of my affection for you was because you persisted
in treating me without any confidence at all. The little things which may
have happened to you abroad, the little details of your life, the harmless
side of your profession--there were so many things I should have been
interested in. And you told me nothing. There were things which seemed to
demand an explanation with regard to your position. You ignored them. You
seemed to enjoy moving in a mysterious atmosphere. It's worse than ever now.
I am intelligent, am I not--trustworthy?"

"You are both," he admitted gravely. "Thank you very much for telling me
this, Geraldine."

"You still have nothing to say to me?" she asked, looking him in the face.

"Nothing," he replied.

She nodded, slipped in her clutch and drove off. Surgeon-Major Thomson
entered the War Office and made his way up many stairs and along many wide
corridors to a large room on the top floor of the building. Two men were
seated at desks, writing. He passed them by with a little greeting and
entered an inner apartment. A pile of letters stood upon his desk. He
examined them one by one, destroyed some, made pencil remarks upon others.
Presently there was a tap at the door and Ambrose entered.

"Chief's compliments and he would be glad if you would step round to his room
at once, sir," he announced.

Thomson locked his desk, made his way to the further end of the building and
was admitted through a door by which a sentry was standing, to an anteroom in
which a dozen people were waiting. His guide passed him through to an inner
apartment, where a man was seated alone. He glanced up at Thomson's entrance.

"Good morning, Thomson!" he said brusquely. "Sit down, please. Leave the
room, Dawkes, and close the door. Thanks! Thomson, what about this request
of yours?"

"I felt bound to bring the matter before you, sir," Thomson replied. "I made
my application to the censor and you know the result."

The Chief swung round in his chair.

"Look here," he said, "the censor's department has instructions to afford you
every possible assistance in any researches you make. There are just
twenty-four names in the United Kingdom which have been admitted to the
privileges of free correspondence. The censor has no right to touch any
letters addressed to them. Sir Alfred Anselman is upon that list."

Thomson nodded gravely.

"So I have been given to understand," he remarked.

The Chief leaned back in his chair. His cold grey eyes were studying the
other's face.

"Thomson," he continued, "I know that you are not a sensationalist. At the
same time, this request of yours is a little nerve-shattering, isn't it? Sir
Alfred Anselman has been the Chancellor's right-hand man. It was mainly owing
to his efforts that the war loan was such a success. He has done more for us
in the city than any other Englishman. He has given large sums to the various
war funds, his nephew is a very distinguished young officer. Now there
suddenly comes a request from you to have the censor pass you copies of all
his Dutch correspondence. There'd be the very devil to pay if I consented."

Thomson cleared his throat for a moment.

"Sir," he said, "you and I have discussed this matter indirectly more than
once. You are not yet of my opinion but you will be. The halfpenny Press has
sickened us so with the subject of spies that the man who groans about
espionage to-day is avoided like a pestilence. Yet it is my impression that
there is in London, undetected and unsuspected, a marvellous system of German
espionage, a company of men who have sold themselves to the enemy, whose names
we should have considered above reproach. It is my job to sift this matter to
the bottom. I can only do so if you will give me supreme power over the
censorship."

"Look here, Thomson," the Chief demanded, "you don't suspect Sir Alfred
Anselman?"

"I do, sir!"

The Chief was obviously dumbfounded. He sat, for a few moments, thinking.

"You're a sane man, too, Thomson," he muttered, "but it's the most astounding
charge I've ever heard."

"It's the most astounding conspiracy," Thomson replied. "I was in Germany a
few weeks ago, as you know."

"I heard all about it. A very brilliant but a very dangerous exploit, that of
yours, Thomson."

"I will tell you my impressions, sir," the latter continued. "The ignorance
displayed in the German newspapers about England is entirely a matter of
censorship. Their actual information as regards every detail of our military
condition is simply amazing. They know exactly what munitions are reaching
our shores from abroad, they know how we are paying for them, they know
exactly our financial condition, they know all about our new guns, they know
just how many men we could send over to France to-morrow and how many we could
get through in three months' time. They know the private views of every one
of the Cabinet Ministers. They knew in Berlin yesterday what took place at
the Cabinet Council the day before. You must realise yourself that some of
this is true. How does the information get through?"

"There are spies, of course," the Chief admitted.

"The ordinary spy could make no such reports as the Germans are getting hour
by hour. If I am to make a success of my job, I want the letters of Sir
Alfred Anselman."

The Chief considered for several moments. Then he wrote a few lines on a
sheet of paper.

"There'll be the perfect devil to pay," he said simply. "We shall have
Cabinet Ministers running about the place like black beetles. What's the
matter with your head?"

"I was shot at in the Park," Thomson explained. "A man had a flying go at me
from a motor-car."

"Was he caught?"

Thomson shook his head.

"I didn't try," he replied. "I want him at liberty. His time will come when
I break up this conspiracy, if I do it at all."

The Chief looked a little aggrieved.

"No one's even let off a pop-gun at me," he grumbled. "They must think you're
the more dangerous of the two, Thomson. You'd better do what you can with
that order as soon as possible. No telling how soon I may have to rescind
it."

Thomson took the hint and departed. He walked quickly back to his room,
thrust the order he had received into an envelope, and sent it round to the
Censor's Department.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mr. Gordon Jones, who had moved his chair a little closer to his host's side,
looked reflectively around the dining-room as he sipped his port. The butler
remained on sufferance because of his grey hairs, but the footmen, who had
been rather a feature of the Anselman establishment, had departed, and their
places had been filled by half a dozen of the smartest of parlourmaids, one or
two of whom were still in evidence.

"Yours is certainly one of the most patriotic households, Sir Alfred, which I
have entered," he declared. "Tell me again, how many servants have you sent
to the war?"

Sir Alfred smiled with the air of one a little proud of his record.

"Four footmen and two chauffeurs from here, eleven gardeners and three indoor
servants from the country," he replied. "That is to say nothing about the
farms, where I have left matters in the hands of my agents. I am paying the
full wages to every one of them."

"And thank heavens you'll still have to pay us a little super-tax," the
Cabinet Minister remarked, smiling.

Sir Alfred found nothing to dismay him in the prospect.

"You shall have every penny of it, my friend," he promised. "I have taken a
quart of a million of your war loan and I shall take the sam amount of your
next one. I spend all my time upon your committees, my own affairs scarcely
interest me, and yet I thought to-day, when my car was stopped to let a
company of the London Regiment march down to Charing-Cross, that there wasn't
one of those khaki-clad young men who wasn't offering more than I."

The Bishop leaned forward from his place.

"Those are noteworthy words of yours, Sir Alfred," he said. "There is nothing
in the whole world so utterly ineffective as our own passionate gratitude must
seem to ourselves when we think of all those young fellows--not soldiers, you
know, but young men of peace, fond of their pleasures, their games, their
sweethearts, their work--throwing it all on one side, passing into another
life, passing into the valley of shadows. I, too, have seen those young men,
Sir Alfred."

The conversation became general. The host of this little dinner-party leaned
back in his place for a moment, engrossed in thought. It was a very
distinguished, if not a large company. There were three Cabinet Ministers, a
high official in the War Office, a bishop, a soldier of royal blood back for a
few days from the Front, and his own nephew--Granet. He sat and looked round
at them and a queer little smile played upon his lips. If only the truth were
known, the world had never seen a stranger gathering. It was a company which
the King himself might have been proud to gather around him; serious,
representative Englishmen--Englishmen, too, of great position. There was not
one of them who had not readily accepted his invitation, there was not one of
them who was not proud to sit at his table, there was not one of them who did
not look upon him as one of the props of the Empire.

There was a little rustle as one of the new parlourmaids walked smoothly to
his side and presented a silver salver. He took the single letter from her,
glanced at it for a moment carelessly and then felt as though the fingers
which held it had been pierced by red-hot wires. The brilliant little company
seemed suddenly to dissolve before his eyes. He saw nothing but the marking
upon that letter, growing larger and larger as he gazed, the veritable writing
of fate pressed upon the envelope by a rubber stamp--by the hand, perchance,
of a clerk--"Opened by Censor."

There was a momentary singing in his ears. He looked at his glass, found it
full, raised it to his lips and drained it. The ghastly moment of suspended
animation passed. He felt no longer that he was in a room from which all the
air had been drawn. He was himself again but the letter was there. Mr.
Gordon Jones, who had been talking to the bishop, leaned towards him and
pointed to the envelope.

"Is that yours, Sir Alfred?" he asked.

Sir Alfred nodded.

"Becoming a little more stringent, I see," he observed, holding it up.

"I thought I recognised the mark," the other replied. "A most outrageous
mistake! I am very glad that it came under my notice. You are absolutely
free from the censor, Sir Alfred."

"I thought so myself," Sir Alfred remarked. "However, I suppose an occasional
mistake can scarcely be wondered at. Don't worry them about it, please. My
Dutch letters are simply records of the balances at my different banks, mere
financial details."

"All the same," Mr. Gordon Jones insisted, "there has been gross neglect
somewhere. I will see that it is inquired into to-morrow morning."

"Very kind of you," Sir Alfred declared. "As you know, I have been able to
give you fragments of information now and then which would cease at once, of
course, if my correspondence as a whole were subject to censorship. An
occasional mistake like this is nothing."

There was another interruption. This time a message had come from the
house--Ministers would be required within the next twenty minutes. The little
party--it was a men's dinner-party only--broke up. Very soon Sir Alfred and
his nephew were left alone. Sir Alfred's fingers shook for a moment as he
tore open the seal of his letter. He glanced through the few lines it
contained and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Come this way, Ronnie," he invited.

They left the dining-room and, eschewing the inviting luxuries of the billiard
room and library, passed into a small room behind, plainly furnished as a
business man's study. Granet seized his uncle by the arm.

"It's coded, I suppose?"

Sir Alfred nodded.

"It's coded, Ronnie, and between you and me I don't believe they'll be able to
read it, but whose doing is that?" he added, pointing with his finger to the
envelope.

"It must have been a mistake," Granet muttered.

Sir Alfred glanced toward the closed door. Without a doubt they were alone.

"I don't know," he said. "Mistakes of this sort don't often occur. As I
Looked around to-night, Ronnie, I thought--I couldn't help thinking that our
position was somewhat wonderful. Does it mean that this is the first breath
of suspicion, I wonder? Was it really only my fancy, or did I hear to-night
the first mutterings of the storm?"

"No one can possibly suspect," Granet declared, "no one who could have
influence enough to override your immunity from censorship. It must have been
an accident."

"I wonder!" Sir Alfred muttered.

"Can't you decode it?" Granet asked eagerly. "There may be news."

Sir Alfred re-entered the larger library and was absent for several minutes.
When he returned, the message was written out in lead pencil:--

Leave London June 4th. Have flares midnight Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's
steps, gardens in front of Savoy. Your last report received.

Granet glanced eagerly back at the original message. It consisted of a few
perfectly harmless sentences concerning various rates of exchange. He gave it
to his uncle with a smile.

"I shouldn't worry about that, sir," he advised.

"It isn't the thing itself I worry about," Sir Alfred said
thoughtfully,--"they'll never decode that message. It's the something that
lies behind it. It's the pointing finger, Ronnie. I thought we'd last it
out, at any rate. Things look different now. You're serious, I suppose? You
don't want to go to America?"

"I don't," Granet replied grimly. "That's all finished, for the present. You
know very well what it is I do want."

Sir Alfred frowned.

"There are plenty of wild enterprises afoot," he admitted, "but I don't know,
after all, that I wish you particularly to be mixed up in them."

"I can't hang about here much longer," his nephew grumbled. "I get the fever
in my blood to be doing something. I had a try this morning."

His uncle looked at him for a moment.

"This morning," he repeated. "Well?"

Granet thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. There was a frown upon his
fine forehead.

"It's that man I told you about," he said bitterly,--"the man I hate. He's
nobody of any account but he always seems to be mixed up in any little trouble
I find myself in. I got out of that affair down at Market Burnham without the
least trouble, and then, as you know, the War Office sent him down, of all the
people on earth, to hold an inquiry. Sometimes I think that he suspects me.
I met him at a critical moment on the battlefield near Niemen. I always
believed that he heard me speaking German--it was just after I had come back
across the lines. The other day--well, I told you about that. Isabel Worth
saved me or I don't know where I should have been. I think I shall kill that
man!"

"What did you say his name was?" Sir Alfred asked, with sudden eagerness.

"Thomson."

There was a moment's silence. Sir Alfred's expression was curiously tense. He
leaned across the table towards his nephew.

"Thomson?" he repeated. "My God! I knew there was something I meant to tell
you. Don't you know, Ronnie?--but of course you don't. You're sure it's
Thomson--Surgeon-Major Thomson?"

"That's the man."

"He is the man with the new post," Sir Alfred declared hoarsely. "He is the
head of the whole Military Intelligence Department! They've set him up at the
War Office. They've practically given him unlimited powers."

"Why, I thought he was inspector of Field Hospitals!" Granet gasped.

"A blind!" his uncle groaned. "He is nothing of the sort. He's Kitchener's
own man, and this," he added, looking at the letter, "must be his work!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

Surgeon-Major Thomson looked up almost eagerly as Ambrose entered his room the
next morning. The young man's manner was dejected and there were black lines
under his eyes. He answered his chief's unspoken question by a little shake
of the head.

"No luck, sir," he announced. "I spent the whole of last night at it,
too--never went to bed at all. I've tried it with thirty-one codes. Then
I've taken the first line or two and tried every possible change."

"I couldn't make anything of it myself," Thomson confessed, looking at the
sheet of paper which even at that moment was spread out before him. "All the
same, Ambrose, I don't believe in it."

"Neither do I, sir." The other assented eagerly. "I am going to have another
try this afternoon. Perhaps there'll be some more letters in then and we can
tell whether there's any similarity."

Thomson frowned.

"I've a sort of feeling, Ambrose," he said, "that we sha'n't have many of
these letters."

"Why not, sir?"

"I heard by telephone, just before you came," Thomson announced, "that a
certain very distinguished person was on his way to see me. Cabinet Ministers
don't come here for nothing, and this one happens to be a friend of Sir
Alfred's."

Ambrose sighed.

"More interference, sir," he groaned. "I don't see how they can expect us to
run our department with the civilians butting in wherever they like. They
want us to save the country and they're to have the credit for it."

There was a knock at the door. A boy scout entered. His eyes were a little
protuberant, his manner betokened awe.

"Mr. Gordon Jones, sir!"

Mr. Gordon Jones entered without waiting for any further announcement.
Thomson rose to his feet and received a genial handshake, after which the
newcomer glanced at Ambrose. Thomson signed to his assistant to leave the
room.

"Major Thomson," the Cabinet Minister began impressively, as he settled down
in his chair, "I have come here to confer with you, to throw myself, to a
certain extent, upon your understanding and your common sense," he added,
speaking with the pleased air of a man sure of his ground and himself.

"You have come to protest, I suppose," Thomson said slowly, "against our
having--"

"To protest against nothing, my dear sir," the other interrupted. "Simply to
explain to you, as I have just explained to your Chief, that while we possess
every sympathy with, and desire to give every latitude in the world to the
military point of view, there are just one or two very small matters in which
we must claim to have a voice. We have, as you know, a free censorship list.
We have put no one upon it who is not far and away above all suspicion. I am
given to understand that a letter addressed to Sir Alfred Anselman was opened
yesterday. I went to see your Chief about it this morning. He has referred
me to you."

"The letter," Thomson remarked, "was opened by my orders."

"I happened," Mr. Gordon Jones went on, "to be dining at Sir Alfred's house
when the letter was presented. Sir Alfred, I must say, took it exceedingly
well. At the same time, I have made it my business to see that this does not
occur again."

Thomson made no sign. His eyebrows, however, rose a little higher.

"The country," his visitor continued, "will know some day what it owes to Sir
Alfred Anselman. At present I can only express, and that poorly, my sense of
personal obligation to him. He has been of the greatest assistance to the
Government in the city and elsewhere. His contributions to our funds have
been magnificent; his advice, his sympathy, invaluable. He is a man inspired
by the highest patriotic sentiments, one of the first and most noteworthy of
British citizens."

Thomson listened in silence and without interruption. He met the
well-satisfied peroration of his visitor without comment.

"I am hoping to hear," the latter concluded, with some slight asperity in his
manner, "that the circumstance to which I have alluded was accidental and will
not be repeated."

Major Thomson glanced thoughtfully at a little pile of documents by his side.
Then he looked coldly towards his visitor and provided him, perhaps, with one
of the most complete surprises of his life.

"I am sorry, Mr. Gordon Jones," he said, "but this is not a matter which I can
discuss with you."

The Cabinet Minister's face was a study.

"Not discuss it?" he repeated blankly.

Major Thomson shook his head.

"Certain responsibilities," he continued quietly, "with regard to the safe
conduct of this country, have been handed over to the military authorities,
which in this particular case I represent. We are in no position for
amenities or courtesies. Our country is in the gravest danger and nothing
else is of the slightest possible significance. The charge which we have
accepted we shall carry out with regard to one thing only, and that is our
idea of what is due to the public safety."

"You mean, in plain words," Mr. Gordon Jones exclaimed, "that no requests from
me or say, for instance, the Prime Minister, would have any weight with you?"

"None whatever," Major Thomson replied coolly. "Without wishing to be in any
way personal, I might say that there are statesmen in your Government, for
whom you must accept a certain amount of responsibility, who have been largely
instrumental in bringing this hideous danger upon the country. As a company
of law-makers you may or may not be excellent people--that is, I suppose,
according to one's political opinions. As a company of men competent to
superintend the direction of a country at war, you must permit me to say that
I consider you have done well in placing certain matters in our hands, and
that you will do better still not to interfere."

Mr. Gordon Jones sat quite still for several moments.

"Major Thomson," he said at last, "I have never heard of your before, and I am
not prepared for a moment to say that I sympathise with your point of view.
But it is at least refreshing to hear any one speak his mind with such
frankness. I must now ask you one question, whether you choose to answer it
or not. The letter which you have opened, addressed to Sir Alfred--you
couldn't possibly find any fault with it?"

"It was apparently a quite harmless production," Major Thomson confessed.

"Do you propose to open any more?"

Thomson shook his head.

"That is within our discretion, sir."

Mr. Gordon Jones struggled with his obvious annoyance.

"Look here," he said, with an attempt at good-humour, "you can at least
abandon the official attitude for a moment with me. Tell me why, of all men
in the world, you have chosen to suspect Sir Alfred Anselman?"

"I am sorry," Thomson replied stiffly, "but this is not a matter which I can
discuss in any other way except officially, and I do not recognise you as
having any special claims for information."

The Minister rose to his feet. Those few minutes marked to him an era in his
official life.

"You are adopting an attitude, sir," he said, "which, however much I may
admire it from one point of view, seems to me scarcely to take into account
the facts of the situation."

Thomson made no reply. He had risen to his feet. His manner clearly
indicated that he considered the interview at an end. Mr. Gordon Jones choked
down his displeasure.

"When you are wanting a civil job, Major Thomson," he concluded, "come and
give us a call. Good morning!"

CHAPTER XXIX

"A lady to see you, sir," Jarvis announced discreetly.

Granet turned quickly around in his chair. Almost instinctively he pulled
down the roll top of the desk before which he was seated. Then he rose to his
feet and held out his hand. He managed with an effort to conceal the
consternation which had succeeded his first impulse of surprise.

"Miss Worth!" he exclaimed.

She came towards him confidently, her hands outstretched, slim, dressed in
sober black, he cheeks as pale as ever, her eyes a little more brilliant. She
threw her muff into a chair and a moment afterwards sank into it herself.

"You have been expecting me?" she asked eagerly.

Granet was a little taken aback.

"I have been hoping to hear from you," he said. "You told me, if you
remember, not to write."

"It was better not," she assented. "Even after you left I had a great deal of
trouble. That odious man, Major Thomson, put me through a regular
cross-examination again, and I had to tell him at last--"

"What?" Granet exclaimed anxiously.

"That we were engaged to be married," she confessed. "There was really no
other way out of it."

"That we were engaged," Granet repeated blankly.

She nodded.

"He pressed me very hard," she went on, "and I am afraid I made some
admissions--well, there were necessary--which, to say the least of it, were
compromising. There was only one way out of it decently for me, and I took
it. You don't mind?"

"Of course not," he replied.

"There was father to be considered," she went on. "He was furious at first--"

"You told your father?" he interrupted.

"I had to," she explained, smoothing her muff. "He was there all the time
that Thomson man was cross-examining me."

"Then your father believes in our engagement, too?"

"He does," she answered drily, "or I am afraid you would have heard a little
more from Major Thomson before now. Ever since that night, father has been
quite impossible to live with. He says he has to being a part of his work all
over again."

"The bombs really did do some damage, then?" he asked.

She nodded, looking at him for a moment curiously.

"Yes," she acknowledged, "they did more harm than any one knows. The place is
like a fortress now. They say that if they can find the other man who helped
to light that flare, he will be shot in five minutes."

Granet, who had been standing with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, leaned over
and took a cigarette from a box.

"Then, for his sake, let us hope that they do not find him," he remarked.

"And ours," she said softly.

Granet stood and looked at her steadfastly, the match burning in his fingers.
Then he threw it away and lit another. The interval had been full of
unadmitted tension, which suddenly passed.

"Shall you think I am horribly greedy," she asked, "if I say that I should
like something to eat? I am dying of hunger."

Granet for a moment was startled. Then he moved towards the bell.

"How absurd of me!" he exclaimed. "Of course, you have just come up, haven't
you?"

"I have come straight from the station here," she replied.

He paused.

"Where are you staying, then?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know yet," she admitted.

"You don't know?" he repeated.

She met his gaze without flinching. There was a little spot of colour in her
cheeks, however, and her lips quivered.

"You see," she explained, "things became absolutely impossible for me at
Market Burnham. I won't say that they disbelieved me--not my father, at any
rate--but he seems to think that it was somehow my fault--that if you hadn't
been there that night the thing wouldn't have happened. I am watched the
whole of the time, in fact not a soul has said a civil word to me--since you
left. I just couldn't stand it any longer. I packed up this morning and I
came away without saying a word to any one."

Granet glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past ten.

"Well, the first thing to do is to get you something to eat," he said; ringing
the bell. "Do you mind having something here or would you like to go to a
restaurant?"

"I should much prefer having it here," she declared. "I am not fit to go
anywhere, and I am tired."

He rang the bell and gave Jarvis a few orders. The girl stood up before the
glass, took off her hat and smoothed her hair with her hands. She had the air
of being absolutely at home.

"Did you come up without any luggage at all?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I have a dressing-bag and a few things downstairs on a taxicab," she said.
"I told the man to stop his engine and wait for a time--until I had seen you,"
she added, turning around.

There was a very slight smile upon her lips, the glimmer of something that was
almost appealing, in her eyes. Granet took her hand and patted it kindly.
Her response was almost hysterical.

"It's very sweet of you to trust me like this," he said. "Jarvis will bring
you something to eat, then I'll take you round to your aunt's. Where is it
she lives--somewhere in Kensington, isn't it? Tomorrow we must talk things
over."

She threw herself back once more in the easy-chair and glanced around her.

"I should like," she decided, "to talk them over now."

He glanced towards the door.

"Just as you please," he said, "only Jarvis will be in with your sandwiches
directly."

She brushed aside his protest.

"I was obliged," she continued, "to say that I was engaged to you, to save you
from something--I don't know what. The more I have thought about it, the more
terrible it has all seemed. I am not going to even ask you for any
explanation. I--I daren't."

Granet looked at his cigarette for a moment thoughtfully. Then he threw it
into the fire.

"Perhaps you are wise," he said coolly. "All the same, when the time comes
there is an explanation."

"It is the present which has become such a problem," she went on. "I was
driven to leave home and I don't think I can go back again. Father is simply
furious with me, and every one about the place seems to have an idea that I am
somehow to blame for what happened the other night."

"That seems to me a little unjust," he protested.

"It isn't unjust at all," she replied brusquely. "I've told them all lies and
I've got to pay for them. I came to you--well, there really wasn't anything
else left for me to do, was there? I hope you don't think that I am horribly
forward. I am quite willing to admit that I like you, that I liked you from
the first moment we met at Lady Anselman's luncheon. At the same time, if
that awful night hadn't changed everything, I should have behaved just like
any other stupidly and properly brought-up young woman--waited and hoped and
made an idiot of myself whenever you were around, and in the end, I suppose,
been disappointed. You see, fate has rather changed that. I had to invent
our engagement to save you--and here I am," she added, with a little nervous
laugh, turning her head as the door opened.

Jarvis entered with the sandwiches and arranged them on a small table by her
side. Granet poured out the wine for her, mixed himself a whiskey-and-soda
and took a sandwich also from the plate.

"Now tell me," he began, as soon as Jarvis had disappeared, "what is there at
the back of your mind about my presence there at Market Burnham that night?"

She laid down her sandwich. For the first time her voice trembled. Granet
realised that beneath all this quietness of demeanour a volcano was
threatening.

"I have told you that I do not want to think of that night," she said firmly.
"I simply do not understand."

"You have something in your mind?" he persisted. "You don't believe, really,
that that man Collins, who was found shot--"

She glanced at the door.

"I couldn't sleep that night," she interrupted. "I heard your car arrive, I
saw you both together, you and the man who was shot. I saw--more than that.
I hadn't meant to tell you this but perhaps it is best. I ask you for no
explanation. You see, I am something of an individualist. I just want one
thing, and about the rest I simply don't care. To me, to myself, to my own
future, to my own happiness the rest is very slight, and I never pretend to be
anything else but a very selfish person. Only you know now that I have lied,
badly."

"I understand," he said. "Finish your sandwiches and I will take you to your
aunt's. To-morrow I will write to your father."

She drew a little sigh.

"I will do whatever you say," she agreed, "only--please look at me."

He stooped down a little. She seized his wrists, her voice was suddenly
hoarse.

"You weren't pretending altogether?" she pleaded. "Don't make me feel a
perfect beast. You did care a little? You weren't just talking nonsense?"

She would have drawn him further down but he kept away.

"Listen," he said, "when I tell you that I am going to write to your father
to-morrow, you know what that means. For the rest, I must think. Perhaps
this is the only way out. Of course, I like you but the truth is best, isn't
it? I hadn't any idea of this. As a matter of fact, I am rather in love with
someone else."

She caught at her breath for a moment, half closed her eyes as thought to shut
out something disagreeable.

"I don't care," she muttered. "You see how low I have fallen--I'll bear even
that. Come," she added, springing up, "my aunt goes to bed before eleven.
You can drive me down there, if you like. Are you going to kiss me?"

He bent over her a little gravely and his lips touched her forehead. She
caught his face suddenly between her hands and kissed him on the lips. Then
she turned towards the door.

"Of course, I am horribly ashamed," she exclaimed, "but then--well, I'm
myself. Come along, please."

He followed her down into the taxi and they drove off towards Kensington.

"How long have you known the other girl?" she asked abruptly.

"Very little longer than I have known you," he answered.

She took off her glove. He felt her hand steal into his.

"You'll try and like me a little, please?" she begged. "There hasn't been any
one who cared for so many years--not all my life. When I came out--ever since
I came out--I have behaved just like other properly, well-brought-up girls.
I've just sat and waited. I've rather avoided men than otherwise. I've sat
and waited. Girls haven't liked me much. They say I'm odd. I'm twenty-eight
now, you know. I haven't enjoyed the last six years. Father's wrapped up in
his work. He thinks he has done his duty if he sends me to London sometimes
to stay with my aunt. She is very much like him, only she is wrapped up in
missions instead of science. Neither of them seems to have time to be human."

"It must have been rotten for you," Granet said kindly.

Her hand clutched his, she came a little nearer.

"Year after year of it," she murmured. "If I had been good-looking, I should
have run away and gone on the stage. If I had been clever, I should have left
home and done something. But I am like millions of others--I am neither. I
had to sit and wait. When I met you, I suddenly began to realise what it
would be like to care for some one. I knew it wasn't any use. And then this
miracle happened. I couldn't help it," she went on doggedly. "I never thought
of it at first. It came to me like a great flash that the only way to save
you--"

"To save me from what?" he asked.

"From being shot as a spy," she answered quickly. "There! I'm not a fool,
you know. You may think I'm a fool about you but I am not about things in
general. Good-bye! This is my aunt's. Don't come in. Ring me up to-morrow
morning. I'll meet you anywhere. Good-bye, please! I want to run away."

He watched her go, a little dazed. A trim parlourmaid came out and, after a
few words of explanation, superintended the disposal of her luggage in the
hall. Then the taxicab man returned.

"Back to Sackville Street," Granet muttered.

CHAPTER XXX

Granet, on his return to Sackville Street, paid the taxicab driver, ascended
the stairs and let himself into his rooms with very much the air of a man who
has passed through a dream. A single glance around, however, brought him
vivid realisations of his unwelcome visitor. The little plate of sandwiches,
half finished, the partly emptied bottle of wine, were still there. One of
her gloves lay in the corner of the easy-chair. He picked it up, drew it for
a moment through his fingers, then crushed it into a ball and flung it into
the fire. Jarvis, who had heard him enter, came from one of the back rooms.

"Clear these things away, Jarvis,' his master ordered. "Leave the whiskey and
soda and tobacco on the table. I may be late."

Jarvis silently obeyed. As soon as he was alone, Granet threw himself into
the easy-chair. He was filled with a bitter sense of being entrapped. He had
been a little rash at Market Burnham, perhaps, but if any other man except
Thomson had been sent there, his explanations would have been accepted without
a word, and all this miserable complication would have been avoided. He
thought over Isabel's coming, all that she had said. She had left him no
loophole. She had the air of a young woman who knew her own mind excellently
well. A single word from her to Thomson and the whole superstructure of his
ingeniously built-up life might tumble to pieces. He sat with folded arms in
a grim attitude of unrest, thinking bitter thoughts. They rolled into his
brain like black shadows. He had been honest in the first instance. With
ancestors from both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to which
he felt the greatest attachment. He remembered his long travels in Germany,
he remembered on his return his growing disapproval of English slackness, her
physical and moral decadence. Her faults had inspired him not with the sorrow
of one of her real sons, but with the contempt of one only half bound to her
by natural ties. The ground had been laid ready for the poison. He had
started honestly enough. His philosophy had satisfied himself. He had felt
no moral degradation in wearing the uniform of one country for the benefit of
another. All this self-disgust he dated from the coming of Geraldine Conyers.
Now he was weary of it all, face to face, too, with a disagreeable and
insistent problem.

He started suddenly in his chair. An interruption ordinary enough, but never
without a certain startling effect, had broken in upon his thoughts. The
telephone on his table was ringing insistently. He rose to his feet and
glanced at the clock as he crossed the room. It was five minutes past twelve.
As he took up the receiver a familiar voice greeted him.

"Is that Ronnie? Yes, this is Lady Anselman. Your uncle told me to ring you
up to see if you were in. He wants you to come round."

"What, to-night?"

"Do come, Ronnie," his aunt continued. "I don't suppose it's anything
important but your uncle seems to want it. No, I sha'n't see you. I'm just
going to bed. I have been playing bridge. I'm sure the duchess cheats--I
have never won at her house in my life. I'll tell your uncle you'll come,
then, Ronnie. . . . Good night!"

Granet laid down the receiver. Somehow or other, the idea of action, even at
that hour of the night was a relief to him. He called to Jarvis and gave him
a few orders. Afterwards he turned out and walked through the
streets--curiously lit and busy it seemed to him--to the corner of Park  Lane,
and up to the great mansion fronting the Park, which had belonged to the
Anselmans for two generations. There were few lights in the windows. He was
admitted at once and passed on to his uncle's own servant.

"Sir Alfred is in the study, sir," the latter announced, "if you will kindly
come this way."

Granet crossed the circular hall hung with wonderful tapestry, and passed
through the sumptuously-furnished library into the smaller, business man''
study, in which Sir Alfred spent much of his time. There were telephones upon
his desk, a tape machine, and a private instrument connected with the
telegraph department. There was a desk for his secretary, now vacant, and
beyond, in the shadows of the apartment, winged bookcases which held a
collection of editions de luxe, first editions, and a great collection of
German and Russian literature, admittedly unique. Sir Alfred was sitting at
his desk, writing a letter. He greeted his nephew with his usual cheerful
nod.

"Wait before you go, Harrison," he said to his valet. "Will you take
anything, Ronald? There are cigars and cigarettes here but nothing to drink.
Harrison, you can put the whiskey and soda on the side, anyhow, then you can
wait for me in my room. I shall not require any other service to-night. Some
one must stay to let Captain Granet out. You understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," the man replied.

"If you don't mind, Ronnie, I will finish this letter while he brings the
whiskey and soda," Sir Alfred said.

Captain Granet strolled around the room. There was no sound for a moment but
the scratching of Sir Alfred's quill pen across the paper. Presently Harrison
returned with the whiskey and soda. Sir Alfred handed him a note.

"To be sent to-night, Harrison," he directed; "no answer."

The man withdrew, closing the door behind him. Sir Alfred, with his hands in
his pockets, walked slowly around. When he came back he turned out all the
lights except the heavily shaded one over his desk, and motioned his nephew to
draw his easy-chair up to the side.

"Well, Ronnie," he said, "I suppose you are wondering why I have sent for you
at this hour of the night?"

"I am," Granet admitted frankly. "Is there any news?--anything behind the
news, perhaps I should say?"

"What there is, is of no account," Sir Alfred replied. "We are going to talk
pure human nature, you and I for the next hour. The fate of empires is a
matter for the historians. It is your fate and mine which just now counts for
most."

"There is some trouble?" Granet asked quickly,--"some suspicion?"

"None whatever," Sir Alfred repeated firmly. "My position was never more
secure than it is at this second. I am the trusted confidant of the Cabinet.
I have done, not only apparently but actually, very important work for them.
Financially, too, my influence as well as my resources have been of vast
assistance to this country."

Granet nodded and waited. He knew enough of his uncle to be aware that he
would develop his statement in his own way.

"When all has gone well," Sir Alfred continued, "when all seems absolutely
peaceful and safe, it is sometimes the time to pause and consider. We are at
that spot at the present moment. You have been lucky, in your way, Ronnie.
Three times, whilst fighting for England, you have managed to penetrate the
German lines and receive from them communications of the greatest importance.
Since your return home you have been of use in various ways. This last
business in Norfolk will not be forgotten. Then take my case. What Germany
knows of our financial position, our strength and our weakness, is due to me.
That Germany is at the present time holding forty millions of money belonging
to the city of London, is also owing to me. In a dozen other ways my
influence has been felt. As I told you before, we have both, in our way, been
successful, but we have reached the absolute limit of our effectiveness."

"What does that mean?" Granet asked.

"It means this," Sir Alfred explained. "When this war was started, I, with
every fact and circumstance before me, with more information, perhaps, than
any other man breathing, predicted peace within three months. I was wrong.
Germany to-day is great and unconquered, but Germany has lost her opportunity.
This may be a war of attrition, or even now the unexpected may come, but to
all effects and purposes Germany is beaten."

"Do you mean this?" Granet exclaimed incredulously.

"Absolutely," his uncle assured him. "Remember that I know more than you do.
There is a new and imminent danger facing the dual alliance. What it is you
will learn soon enough. The war may drag on for many months but the chances
of the great German triumph we have dreamed of, have passed. They know it as
well as we do. I have seen the writing on the wall for months. To-day I have
concluded all my arrangements. I have broken off all negotiations with
Berlin. They recognise the authority and they absolve me. They know that it
will be well to have a friend here when the time comes for drawing up the
pact."

Granet gripped the sides of his chair with his hand. It seemed to him
impossible that with these few commonplace words the fate of all Europe was
being pronounced.

"Do you mean that Germany will be crushed?" he demanded.

Sir Alfred shook his head.

"I still believe that impossible," he said, "but the peace of exhaustion will
come, and come surely, before many months have passed. It is time for us to
think of ourselves. So far as I am concerned, well, there is that one
censored letter--nothing in itself, yet damning if the code should be
discovered. As for you, well, you are safe from anything transpiring in
France, and although you seem to have been rather unlucky there, you appear to
be safe as regards Norfolk. You must make up your mind now to follow my lead.
Take a home command, do the rest of your soldiering quietly, and shout with
the others when the day of peace comes. These last few months must be our
great secret. At heart we may have longed to call ourselves sons of a
mightier nation, but fate is against us. We must continue Englishmen."

"You've taken my breath away," Granet declared. "Let me realise this for a
moment."

He sat quite still. A rush of thoughts had crowded into his brain. First and
foremost was the thought of Geraldine. If he could cover up his traces! If
it were true that he was set free now from his pledges! Then he remembered
his visitor of the evening and his heart sank.

"Look here," he confessed, "in a way this is a huge relief. I, like you,
thought it was to last for three months and I thought I could stick it. While
the excitement of the thing was about it was easy enough, but listen, uncle.
That Norfolk affair--I am not really out of that."

"What do you mean?" Sir Alfred demanded anxiously. "This fellow Thomson?"

"Thomson, of course," Granet assented, "but the real trouble has come to me in
a different way. I told you that the girl got me out of it. She couldn't
stand the second cross-examination. She was driven into a corner, and
finally, to clear herself, said that we were engaged to be married. She has
come up to London, came to me to-night. She expects me to marry her."

"How much does she know?" Sir Alfred asked.

"Everything," Granet groaned. "It was she who had told me of the waterway
across the marshes. She saw me there with Collins, just before the flare was
lit. She knew that I lied to them when they found me."

Sir Alfred sighed.

"It's a big price, Ronnie," he said, "but you'll have to pay it. The sooner
you marry the girl and close her mouth, the better."

"If it hadn't been for that damned fellow Thomson," Granet muttered, "there
would never have been a suspicion."

"If it hadn't been for the same very enterprising gentleman," Sir Alfred
observed, "my correspondence would never have been tampered with."

Granet leaned a little forward.

"Thomson is our one remaining danger," he said. "I have had the feeling since
first he half recognised me. We met, you know, in Belgium. It was just when
I was coming out of the German lines. Somehow or other he must have been on
my track ever since. I took no notice of it. I thought it was simply
because--because he was engaged to Geraldine Conyers."

"You are rivals in love, too, eh?" Sir Alfred remarked.

"Geraldine Conyers  is the girl I want to marry," Granet admitted.

"Thomson," Sir Alfred murmured to himself,--"Surgeon-Major Hugh Thomson. He
seems to be the only man, Ronnie, from whom we have the least danger to fear.
Personally, I think I am secure. I do not believe that that single letter
will be ever deciphered, and if it is, three-parts of the Cabinet are my
friends. I could ruin the Stock Exchange to-morrow, bring London's credit,
for a time, at any rate, below the credit of Belgrade."

"All the same, it seems to me," Granet declared grimly, "that we should both
be more comfortable if there were no Surgeon-Major Thomson."

The very last dispatches I had to deal with," Sir Alfred continued, "made
allusion to him. They don't love some of his work in Berlin, I can tell you.
What sort of a man is he, Ronnie? Can he be bought? A hundred thousand
pounds would be a fortune to a man like that."

"There is only one way of dealing with him," Granet said fiercely. "I have
tried it once. I expect I'll have to try again."

Sir Alfred leaned across the table.

"Don't be rash, Ronnie," he advised. "And yet, remember this. The man is a
real danger, both to you and to me. He is the only man who has had anything
to do with the Intelligence Department here, who is worth a snap of the
fingers. Now go home, Ronnie. You came here--well, never mind what you were
when you came here. You are going back an Englishman. If they won't send you
to the Front again, bother them for some work here, and stick to it. You will
get no reports nor any visitors. I have strangled the whole system. You and
I are cut loose from it. We are free-lances. Mind, I still believe that in
the end German progress and German culture will dominate the world, but it may
not be in our day. It just happens that we have stuck a little too soon. Let
us make the best of things, Ronnie. You have many years of life. I have some
of unabated power. Let us be thankful that we were wise enough to stop in
time."

Granet rose to his feet. His uncle watched him curiously.

"You're young, of course, Ronnie," he continued indulgently. "You haven't yet
fitted your burden on to your shoulders properly. England or Germany, you
have some of both in you. After all, it isn't a vital matter under which
banner you travel. It isn't quite like that with me. I have lived here all
my life and I wouldn't care to live anywhere else, but that's because I carry
my own country with me. It's English air I breathe but it's a German heart I
still carry with me. Good night, Ronnie! Remember about Thomson."

The two men wrung hands and Granet made his way towards the door.

"About Thomson," he repeated to himself, as the servant conducted him towards
the door.

CHAPTER XXXI

Ambrose announced a visitor, early on the following morning, with some show of
interest.

"Captain Granet to see you, sir. We've a good many notes about him. Would
you like the book?"

Thomson shook his head.

"Thank you," he answered drily, "I have it in my desk but I think I can
remember. Is he outside now?"

"Yes, sir! He said he wouldn't keep you for more than a few minutes, if you
could spare him a short interview."

"Any luck last night?"

Ambrose sighed.

"I was up till three o'clock again. Once I thought I was on the track of it.
I have come to the conclusion now that it's one of those codes that depend
upon shifting quantities. I shall start again to-night on a different idea.
Shall I show Captain Granet in, sir?"

Thomson assented, and a few minutes later Granet entered the room. He made no
attempt to shake hands or to take a seat. Thomson looked at him coldly.

"Well," he asked, abruptly, "what can I do for you?"

"I don't suppose you can do anything," Granet replied, "but I am going to
spend to-day and to-morrow, too, if necessary, in this place, bothering every
one I ever heard of. You have some influence, I know. Get me a job out of
this country."

Thomson raised his eyebrows slightly.

"You want to go abroad again?"

"Anywhere--anyhow! If they won't have me back in France, although heaven
knows why not, can I be sent to the Dardanelles, or even East Africa? I'll
take out Territorials, if you like. I'll do anything sooner than be ordered
to one of these infernal country towns to train young tradespeople. If I
don't worry, I know I shall get a home appointment directly, and I don't want
it."

Thomson studied his visitor, for a moment, carefully.

"So you want to be fighting again, eh?" he remarked.

"I do," Granet answered firmly.

Major Thomson drew a little locked book towards him, unfastened it with a key
from his chain and held his hand over the page. It was noticeable that his
right hand slipped open a few inches the right-hand drawer of his desk.

"You have come to me, Captain Granet," he said, "to ask my aid in getting you
a job. Well, if I could give you one where I was perfectly certain that you
would be shot in your first skirmish, I would give it to you, with pleasure.
Under present conditions, however, it is my impression that the further you
are from any British fighting force, the better it will be fore the safety and
welfare of that force."

Granet's face was suddenly rigid. He had turned a little paler and his eyes
flashed.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

Thomson had removed his hand and was glancing at the open page.

"There are a few notes here about you," he said. "I will not read them all
but I will give you some extracts. There is your full name and parentage,
tracing out the amount of foreign blood which I find is in your veins. There
is a verbatim account of a report made to me by your Brigadier-General, in
which it seems that in the fighting under his command you were three times
apparently taken prisoner, three times you apparently escaped; the information
which you brought back led to at least two disasters; the information which
exactly at the time you were absent seemed to come miraculously into the hands
of the enemy, resulted in even greater trouble for us."

"Do you insinuate, then, that I am a traitor?" Granet asked fiercely.

"I insinuate nothing," Thomson replied quietly. "So far as you and I are
concerned, we may as well, I presume, understand one another. You are,
without doubt, aware that my post as inspector of hospitals is a blind. I am,
as a matter of fact, chief of the Intelligence Department, with a rank which
at present I do not choose to use. I have been myself to your
Brigadier-General and bought home this report, and if it is any satisfaction
to you to know it, I brought also an urgent request that you should not be
allowed to rejoin any part of the force under his control."

"It was simply rotten luck," Granet muttered.

"I come here to a few more notes," Thomson proceeded. "I meet you some weeks
ago at a luncheon party at the Ritz. A Belgian waiter, who I learned, by
later inquiries was present as a prisoner in the village where you were being
entertained as a guest at the German headquarters, recognised you and was on
the point of making a disclosure. The excitement, however, was too much for
him and he fainted. He was at once removed, under your auspices, and died a
few days later, at one of your uncle's country houses, before he could make
any statement."

"This is ridiculous!" Granet exclaimed. "I never saw the fellow before in my
life."

"Ridiculous, doubtless, but a coincidence," Major Thomson replied, turning
over the next page of his book. "A little later I find you taking an immense
interest in our new destroyers, trying, in fact, to induce young Conyers to
explain our wire netting system, following him down to Portsmouth and doing
your best to discover also the meaning of a new device attached to his
destroyer."

"That is simply absurd," Granet protested. "I was interested in the subject,
as any military officer would be in an important naval development. My
journey to Portsmouth was simply an act of courtesy to Miss Conyers and her
cousin."

"I find you next," Thomson went on immovably, "visiting the one French
statesmen whom we in England had cause to fear, in his hotel in London. I
find that very soon afterwards that statesman is in possession of an autograph
letter from the Kaiser, offering peace to the French people on extraordinary
terms. Who was the intermediary who brought that document, Captain Granet?"

Granet's face never twitched. He held himself with cold composure.

"These," he declared, "are fairy tales. Pailleton was a friend of mine.
During my visit we did not speak of politics.

"More coincidences," Major Thomson remarked. "We pass on, then, to that night
at Market Burnham Hall, when a Zeppelin was guided to the spot where Sir
Meyville Worth was experimenting on behalf of the British Government, and
dropped destructive bombs. A man was shot dead by the side of the flare.
That man was one of your companions at the Dormy House Club."

"I neither spoke to him nor saw him there, except as a casual visitor," Granet
insisted.

"That I venture to doubt," Major Thomson replied. "At any rate, there is
enough circumstantial evidence against you in this book to warrant my taking
the keenest interest in your future. As a matter of fact, you would have been
at the Tower, or underneath it, at this very moment, but for the young lady
who probably perjured herself to save you. Now that you know my opinion of
you, Captain Granet, you will understand that I should hesitate before
recommending you to any post whatever in the service of this country."

Granet made a stealthy movement forward. He had been edging a little closer
to the desk and he was barely two yards away. He suddenly paused. Thomson
had closed the drawer now and he was holding a small revolver very steadily in
his right hand.

"Granet," he said, "that sort of thing won't do. You know now what I think of
you. Besides these little incidents which I have related, you are suspected
of having, in the disguise of an American clergyman, delivered a message from
the German Government to an English Cabinet Minister, and, to come to more
personal matters, I myself suspect you of having made two attempts on my life.
It is my firm belief that you are nothing more nor less than a common and
dangerous German spy. Keep back!"

The veins were standing out like whipcord on Granet's flushed forehead. He
swayed on his feet. Twice he had seemed as though he would spring at his
opponent.

"Now listen to me," Thomson continued. "On Monday I am going from Southampton
to Boulogne for forty-eight hours, to attend a court martial there. There is
only one decent thing you can do. You know what that is. I'll have you
exchanged, if you are willing, into a line regiment with your present rank.
Your colonel will have a hint. It will be your duty to meet the first German
bullet you can find. If you are content with that, I'll arrange it for you.
If not--"

Major Thomson paused. There was a queer twisted smile at the corners of his
lips.

"If not," he concluded, "there is one more little note to add in this book and
the account will be full. You know now the terms, Captain Granet, on which
you can go to the Front. I will give you ten days to consider."

"If I accept an offer like this," Granet protested, "I shall be pleading
guilty to all the rubbish you have talked."

"If it weren't for the fact," Major Thomson told him sternly, "that you have
worn his Majesty's uniform, that you are a soldier, and that the horror of it
would bring pain to every man who has shared with you that privilege, I have
quite enough evidence here to bring your career to a disgraceful end. I give
you your chance, not for your own sake but for the honour of the Army. What
do you say?"

Granet picked up his hat.

"I'll think it over," he muttered.

He walked out of the room without any attempt at farewell, pushed his way
along the corridors, down the steps and out into Whitehall. His face was
distorted by a new expression. A sudden hatred of Thomson had blazed up in
him. He was at bay, driven there by a relentless enemy, the man who had
tracked him down, as he honestly believed, to some extent through jealousy.
The thoughts framed themselves quickly in his mind. With unseeing eyes he
walked across Trafalgar Square and made his way to his club in Pall Mall.
Here he wrote a few lines to Isabel Worth, regretting that he was called out
of town on military business for forty-eight hours. Afterwards he took a taxi
and called at his rooms, walked restlessly up and down while Jarvis threw a
few clothes into a bag, changed his own apparel for a rough tweed suit, and
drove to Paddington. A few minutes later he took his place in the Cornish
Express.

CHAPTER XXXII

Granet emerged from the Tregarten Hotel at St. Mary's on the following
morning, about half-past eight, and strolled down the narrow strip of lawn
which bordered the village street. A couple of boatmen advanced at once to
meet him. Granet greeted them cheerily.

"Yes, I want a boat," he admitted. "I'd like to do a bit of sailing. A
friend of mine was here and had a chap named Rowsell--Job Rowsell. Either of
you answer to that name, by chance?"

The elder of the two shook his head.

"My name's Matthew Nichols," he announced, "and this is my brother-in-law, Joe
Lethbridge. We've both of us got stout sailing craft and all the
recommendations a man need have. As for Job Rowsell, well, he ain't here--not
just at this moment, so to speak."

Granet considered the matter briefly.

"Well," he decided, "it seems to me I must talk to this chap Rowsell before I
do anything. I'm under a sort of promise."

The two boatmen looked at one another. The one who had addressed him first
turned a little away.

"Just as you like, sir," he announced. "No doubt Rowsell will be up this way
towards afternoon."

"Afternoon? But I want to go out at once," Granet protested.

Matthew Nichols removed his pipe from his mouth and spat upon the ground
thoughtfully.

"I doubt whether you'll get Job Rowsell to shift before mid-day. I'm none so
sure he'll go out at all with this nor-wester blowing."

"What's the matter with him?" Granet asked. "Is he lazy?"

The man who as yet had scarcely spoken, swung round on his heel.

"He's no lazy, sir," he said. "That's not the right word. But he's come into
money some way or other, Job Rowsell has. There's none of us knows how, and
it ain't our business, but he spends most of his time in the public-house and
he seems to have taken a fancy for night sailing alone, which to my mind, and
there are others of us as say the same, ain't none too healthy an occupation.
And that's all there is to be said of Job Rowsell, as I knows of."

"It's a good deal, too," Granet remarked thoughtfully. "Where does he live?"

"Fourth house on the left in yonder street," Matthew Nichols replied, pointing
with his pipe. "Maybe he'll come if you send for him, maybe he won't."

"I must try to keep my word to my friend," Granet decided. "If I don't find
him, I'll come back and look for you fellows again."

He turned back to the little writing-room, scribbled a note and sent it down
by the boots. In about half an hour he was called once more out into the
garden. A huge, loose-jointed man was standing there, unshaven, untidily
dressed, and with the look in his eyes of a man who has been drinking heavily.

"Are you Job Rowsell?" Granet inquired.

"That's my name," the man admitted. "Is there anything wrong with it?"

"Not that I know of," Granet replied. "I want you to take me out sailing. Is
your boat ready?"

The man glanced up at the sky.

"I don't know as I want to go," he grumbled. "There's dirty weather about."

"I think you'd better," Granet urged. "I'm not a bad payer and I can help
with the boat. Let's go and look at her any way."

They walked together down to the harbour. Granet said very little, his
companion nothing at all. They stood on the jetty and gazed across to where
the sailing boats were anchored.

"That's the Saucy Jane," Job Rowsell indicated, stretching out a forefinger.

Granet scrambled down into a small dinghy which was tied to the side of the
stone wall.

"We'd better be getting on board," he suggested.

Rowsell stared at him for a moment but acquiesced. They pulled across and
boarded the Saucy Jane. A boy whom they found on the deck took the boat back.
Rowsell set his sails slowly but with precision. The moment he stepped on
board he seemed to become an altered man.

"Where might you be wanting to go?" he asked. "You'll need them oilskins,
sure."

"I want to run out to the Bishop Lighthouse," Granet announced.

Rowsell shook his head.

It's no sort of a day to face the Atlantic, sir," he declared. "We'll try a
spin round St. Mary and White Island, if you like."

Granet fastened his oilskins and stooped for a moment to alter one of the
sails.

"Look here," he said, taking his seat at the tiller, "this is my show, Job
Rowsell. There's a five pound note for you at the end of the day, if you go
where I tell you and nowhere else."

The man eyed him sullenly. A few minutes later they were rushing out of the
harbour.

"It's a poor job, sailing a pleasure boat," he muttered. "Not many of us as
wouldn't sell his soul for five pounds."

They reached St. Agnes before they came round on the first tack. Then, with
the spray beating in their faces, they swung around and made for the opening
between the two islands. For a time the business of sailing kept them both
occupied. In two hours' time they were standing out towards Bishop
Lighthouse. Job Rowsell took a long breath and filled a pipe with tobacco.
He was looking more himself now.

"I'll bring her round the point there," he said, "and we'll come up the
Channel and home by Bryher."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Granet ordered. "Keep her head out for the
open sea till I tell you to swing round."

Rowsell looked at his passenger with troubled face.

"Are you another of 'em?" he asked abruptly.

"Don't you mind who I am," Granet answered. "I'm on a job I'm going to see
through. If a fiver isn't enough for you, make it a tenner, but keep her
going where I put her."

Rowsell obeyed but his face grew darker. He leaned towards his passenger.

"What's your game?" he demanded hoarsely. "There's some of them on the
island'd have me by the throat if they only knew the things I could tell 'em.
What's your game here, eh? Are you on the cross?"

"I am not," Granet replied, "or I shouldn't have needed to bring you to sea.
I know all about you, Job Rowsell. You're doing very well and you may do a
bit better by and by. Now sit tight and keep a still tongue in your head."

They were in a queer part of the broken, rocky island group. There was a
great indenture in the rocks up which the sea came hissing; to the left, round
the corner, the lighthouse. Granet drew what looked to be a large
pocket-handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat, pulled down their
pennant with nimble fingers, tied on another and hauled it up. Job Rowsell
stared at him.

"What's that?"

"It's the German flag, you fool," Granet answered.

"I'll have none of that on my boat," the man declared surlily. "An odd fiver
for a kindness--"

"Shut up!" Granet snapped, drawing his revolver from his pocket. "You run the
boat and mind your own business, Rowsell. I'm not out here to be fooled with.
. . .My God!"

Almost at their side the periscope of a submarine had suddenly appeared.
Slowly it rose to the surface. An officer in German naval uniform struggled
up and called out. Granet spoke to him rapidly in German. Job Rowsell
started at them both, then he drew a flask from his pocket and took a long
pull. The submarine grew nearer and Granet tossed a small roll of paper
across the chasm of waters. All that passed between the two men was to Job
Rowsell unintelligible. The last few words, however, the German repeated in
English.

"The Princess Hilda from Southampton, tomorrow at midnight," he repeated
thoughtfully. "Well, it's a big business."

"It's worth it," Granet assured him. "They may call it a hospital ship but it
isn't. I am convinced that the one man who is more dangerous to us than any
other Englishman, will be on board."

"It shall then be done," the other promised. "So!"

He looked upward to the flag and saluted Granet. A great sea bore them a
little apart. Granet pulled down the German flag, tied up a stone inside it
and threw it into the next wave.

"You can take me back now," he told the boatman.

They were four hours making the harbour. Three times they failed to get round
the last point, met at each time by clouds of hissing spray. When at last
they sailed in, there was a little crowd to watch them. Nichols and
Lethbridge stood on one side with gloomy faces.

"It's a queer day for pleasure sailing," Nicholas remarked to Job Rowsell, as
he came up the wet steps of the pier.

"It's all I want of it for a bit, any way," Rowsell muttered, pushing his way
along the quay. "If there's any of you for a drink, I'm your man. What-ho,
Nichols?--Lethbridge?"

Lethbridge muttered something and turned away. Nichols, too, declined.

"I am not sure, Job Rowsell," the latter declared, "that I like your money nor
the way you earn it."

Job Rowsell stopped for a minute. There was an ugly look in his sullen face.

"If you weren't my own bother-in-law, Matthew Nichols," he said, "I'd shove
those words down your throat."

"And if you weren't my sister's husband," Nichols retorted, turning away, "I'd
take a little trip over to Penzance and say a few words at the Police Station
there."

Granet laughed good-humouredly.

"You fellows don't need to get bad-tempered with one another," he observed.
"Look here, I shall have three days here. I'll take one of you each day--make
a fair thing of it, eh? You to-morrow, Nichols, and you the next day
Lethbridge. I'm not particular about the weather, as Job Rowsell can tell
you, and I've sailed a boat since I was a boy. I'm no land-lubber, am I,
Rowsell?"

"No, you can sail the boat all right," Rowsell admitted, looking back over his
shoulder. "You'd sail it into Hell itself, if one'd let you. Come on, you
boys, if there's any one of you as fancies to drink. I'm wet to the skin."

Nichols' boat was duly prepared at nine o'clock on the following morning.
Lethbridge shouted to him from the rails.

"Gentleman's changed his mind, I reckon. He went off on the eight o'clock
boat for Penzance."

Nichols commenced stolidly to furl his sails again.

"It's my thinking Lethbridge," he said, as he clambered into the dinghy, "that
there's things going on in this island which you and me don't understand. I'm
for a few plain words with Job Rowsell, though he's my own sister's husband."

"Plain words is more than you'll get from Job," Lethbridge replied gloomily.
"He slept last night on the floor at the 'Blue Crown,' and he's there this
morning, clamouring for brandy and pawing the air. He's got the blue devils,
that's what he's got."

"There's money," Nichols declared solemnly, "some money, that is, that does no
one any good."

CHAPTER XXXIII

There was a shrill whistle from the captain's bridge, and the steamer, which
had scarcely yet gathered way, swung slowly around. Rushing up towards it
through the mists came a little naval launch, in the stern of which a single
man was seated. In an incredibly short space of time it was alongside, the
passenger had climbed up the rope ladder, the pinnace had sheered off and the
steamer was once more heading towards the Channel.

The newly-arrived passenger was making his way towards the saloon when a voice
which seemed to come from behind a pile of rugs heaped around a steamer-chair,
arrested his progress.

"Hugh! Major Thomson!"

He stopped short. Geraldine shook herself free from her rugs and sat up.
They looked at one another in astonishment.

"Why, Geraldine," he exclaimed, "where are you off to?"

"To Boulogne, of course," she answered. "Don't pretend that you are
surprised. Why, you got me the appointment yourself."

"Of course," he agreed, "only I had no idea that you were going just yet, or
that you were on this boat."

"They told me to come out this week," she said, as he drew a chair to her
side, "and so many of the nurses and doctors were going by this boat that I
thought I would come, too. I feel quite a professional already. Nearly all
the women here are in nurse's uniform and three-quarters of the men on board
are doctors. Where are you going, Hugh?"

"Just to the Base and back again to-morrow," he told here. "There's a court
martial I want to attend."

"Still mysterious," she laughed. "What have you to do with courts martial,
Hugh?"

"Too much, just for the moment," he answered lightly. "Would you like some
coffee or anything?"

She shook her head.

"No, thank you. I had an excellent supper before we started. I looked at
some of the cabins but I decided to spend the night on deck. What about you?
You seem to have arrived in a hurry."

"I missed the train in London," he explained. "They kept me at the War
Office. Then I had to come down in a Government car and we couldn't quite
catch up. Any news from Ralph?"

"I had a letter days ago," she told him. "It was posted at Harwich but he
couldn't say where he was, and of course he couldn't give me any news. Father
came back from the Admiralty very excited yesterday, though. He says that we
have sunk four or five more submarines, and that Ralph's new equipment is an
immense success. By-the-bye, is there any danger of submarines here?"

"I shouldn't think so," Thomson answered. "They are very busy round the
Scilly Islands but we seem to have been able to keep them out of the Channel.
I thought we should have been convoyed, though."

"In any case," she remarked, "we are a hospital ship. I expect they'd leave
us alone. Major Thomson," she went on, "I wonder, do you really believe all
these stories of the horrible doings of the Germans--the way they have treated
drowning people attacked by their submarines, and these hateful stories of
Belgium? Sometimes it seems to me as though there was a fog of hatred which
had sprung up between the two countries, and we could neither of us quite see
clearly what the other was doing."

"I think there is something in that," Major Thomson agreed. "On the other
hand I think it is part of the German principle to make war ruthlessly. I
have seen things in Belgium which I shall never forget. As to the submarine
business, if half the things are true that we have read, they seem to have
behaved like brutes. It's queer, too," he went on, "for as a rule seamen are
never cruel."

They were silent for a time. For some reason or other, they both avoided
mention of the one subject which was in the minds of both. It was not until
after the steward had brought him some coffee and they were more than half-way
across, that Thomson a little abruptly asked her a question.

"Have you seen anything of Captain Granet lately?"

"Nothing," she replied.

He turned his head slightly towards her.

"Would it trouble you very much if he never came to see you again?"

She was watching the misty dawn.

"I do not know," she answered, "but I think the he will come."

"I am not so sure," he told her.

"Do you mean that he is in any fresh trouble?" she asked quickly.

"I don't think he needs any fresh trouble exactly," Thomson remarked, "but
suppose we leave him alone for a little time? Our meeting was so unexpected,
and, for me, such a pleasure. Don't let us spoil it."

"Let us talk of other things," she agreed readily. "Tell me, for instance,
just what does a submarine look like when it pops up out of the sea?"

"I have never seen one close to, he admitted "except on the surface. Why do
you ask?"

She pointed with her forefinger to a little spot almost between two banks of
mist.

"Because I fancied just now that I saw something sticking up out of the water
there, something which might have been the periscope of a submarine," she
replied.

He looked in the direction which she indicated but shook his head.

"I can see nothing," he said, "but in any case I don't think they would attack
a hospital ship. This is a dangerous area for them, too. We are bound to
have a few destroyers close at hand. I wonder if Ralph--"

He never finished his sentence. The shock which they had both read about but
never dreamed of experiencing, flung them without a moment's warning onto
their hands and feet. The steamer seemed as though it had been lifted out of
the water. There was a report as though some great cannon had been fired off
in their very ears. Looking along the deck, it suddenly seemed to Thomson
that her bows were pointing to the sky. The after portion, where they were
seated, was vibrating and shaking as though they had struck a rock, and only a
few yards away from them, towards the middle of the boat, the end of the cabin
was riven bare to the heavens. Timbers were creaking and splintering in every
direction. There was a great gap already in the side of the steamer, as
though some one had taken a cut out of it. Then, high above the shrieking of
the escaped steam and the cracking of woodwork, the siren of the boat screamed
out its frantic summons for help. Geraldine for the moment lost her nerve.
She began to shriek, and ran towards the nearest boat, into which the people
were climbing like ants. Thomson drew her back.

"Don't hurry," he begged. "Here!"

He threw open the door of a cabin which leaned over them, snatched two of the
lifebelts from the berth and rapidly fastened one on her. There was some
semblance of order on deck now that the first confusion had passed. The men
were all rushing to quarters. Three of the boats had been blown into
splinters upon their davits. The fourth, terribly overloaded, was being
lowered. Thomson, working like a madman, was tying some spare belts on to a
table which had floated out from the cabin. More than once the boat gave a
great plunge and they had to hold on to the cabin doors. A huge wave broke
completely over them, drenching them from head to foot. The top of the rail
now was on a level with the sea. Thomson stood up for a moment and looked
around. Then he turned to Geraldine.

"Look here," he said, "there'll be plenty of craft around to pick us up. This
thing can't sink. Keep the lifebelt on and get your arms through the belt I
have tied on to the table, so. That's right. Now come over to the side."

"You're not going to jump overboard?" she cried.

"We are going to just step overboard," he explained. "It's the only chance.
Throw off your fur cloak. You see, if we stay a moment later we shall be
dragged down after the steamer. We must get clear while we can."

"I can swim," he answered quickly, throwing off his coat and waistcoat. "This
thing will support me easily. Believe me, Geraldine, there's nothing to be
frightened about. We can keep her afloat for half-a-dozen hours, if
necessary, with this only don't let go of it. Keep your arms through, and--by
God! Quick!"

A huge wave broke right over their heads. The boat, which had nearly reached
the level of the water, was overturned, and the air seemed full of the
screaming of women, the loud shouting of orders from the bridge, where the
captain was standing with his hands upon the fast sinking rail. The water was
up to their waists now. In a moment they ceased to feel anything beneath
their feet. Geraldine found herself suddenly buoyant. Thomson, swimming with
one arm, locked the other in their raft.

"Push yourself away from everything as well as you can," he whispered, "and,
Geraldine--if anything should happen to us, I never changed--not for a
moment."

"I don't believe I ever did, either," she sobbed, holding out her hand.

Another wave broke over them. They came up, however. He gripped her wet hand
for a moment. All around them were articles of ship's furniture, broken
planks, here and there a man swimming. From close at hand came the shriek of
the vanishing siren.

"Look!" Geraldine cried.

Barely fifty feet away from them was the submarine. The captain and four or
five of the men where on deck. Thomson shouted to him.

"Can't you save some of these women?"

The answer was a laugh--hoarse, brutal, derisive. The submarine glided away.
Thomson's face as he looked after it, was black with anger. The next moment
he recovered himself, however. He had need of all his strength.

"Don't listen to anything, Geraldine," he begged her. "They will nearly all
be saved. Can't you hear the sirens already? There are plenty of ships
coming up. Remember, we can't go down so long as we keep hold here."

"But you've no lifebelt on," she faltered.

"I don't need it," he assured her. "I can keep afloat perfectly well. You're
not cold?"

"No," she gasped, "but I feel so low down. The sky seems suddenly further
away. Oh, if some one would come!"

There were sirens now, and plenty of them, close at hand. Out of the mist
they saw a great black hull looming.

"They're here all right!" he cried. "Courage, Geraldine! It's only another
five minutes."

Thirty miles an hour into a fog of mist, with the spray falling like a
fountain and the hiss of the seawater like devil's music in their ears. Then
the haze lifted like the curtain before the stage of a theatre, and rolled
away into the dim distance. An officer stood by Conyers' side.

"Hospital ship Princess Hilda just torpedoed by a submarine, sir. They're
picking up the survivors already. We're right into 'em sir."

Even as he spoke, the moonlight shone down. There were two trawlers and a
patrol boat in sight, and twenty or thirty boats rowing to the scene of the
disaster. Suddenly there was a shout.

"Submarine on the port bow!"

They swung around. The sea seemed churned into a mass of soapy foam. Conyers
gripped the rail in front of him. The orders had scarcely left his lips
before the guns were thundering out. The covered-in structure on the lower
deck blazed with an unexpected light. The gun below swung slowly downwards,
moved by some unseen instrument. Columns of spray leapt into the air, the
roar of the guns was deafening. Then there was another shout--a hoarse yell
of excitement. Barely a hundred yards away, the submarine, wobbling
strangely, appeared on the surface. An officer in the stern held up the white
flag.

"We are sinking!" he shouted. "We surrender!"

For a single second Conyers hesitated. Then he looked downwards. The corpse
of a woman went floating by;  a child, tied on to a table, was bobbing against
the side. The red fires flashed before his eyes; the thunder of his voice
broke the momentary stillness. In obedience to his command, the guns belched
out a level line of flame,--there was nothing more left of the submarine, or
of the men clinging on to it like flies. Conyers watched them disappear
without the slightest change of expression.

"Hell's the only place for them!" he muttered. "Send out the boats, Johnson,
and cruise around. There may be something else left to be picked up."

The word of command was passed forward and immediately a boat was lowered.

"A man and a woman clinging to a table, sir," an officer reported to Conyers.
"We're bringing them on board."

Conyers moved to the side of the bridge. He saw Geraldine lifted into the
boat, and Thomson, as soon as she was safe, clamber in after her. He watched
them hauled up on to the deck of the destroyer and suddenly he recognised
them.

"My God!" he exclaimed, as he dashed down the ladder. "It's Geraldine!"

She was standing on the deck, the wet streaming from her, supported by a
sailor on either side. She gasped a little when she saw him. She was quite
conscious and her voice was steady.

"We are both here, Ralph," she cried, "Hugh and I. He saved my life. Thank
heavens you are here!"

Already the steward was hastening forward with brandy. Geraldine sipped a
little and passed the glass to Thomson. Then she turned swiftly to her
brother. There was an unfamiliar look in her face.

"Ralph," she muttered, "don't bother about us. Don't stop for anything else.
Can't you find that submarine? I saw them all--the men--laughing as they
passed away!"

Conyers' eyes blazed for a moment with reminiscent fury. Then his lips parted
and he broke into strange, discordant merriment.

"They'll laugh no more in this world, Geraldine," he cried, in fierce triumph.
"They're down at the bottom of the sea, every man and dog of them!"

She gripped him by the shoulder--Geraldine, who had never willingly hurt and
insect.

"Ralph," she sobbed, "thank God! Thank God you did it!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

It was towards the close of an unusually long day's work and Major Thomson
sighed with relief as he realised that at last his anteroom was empty. He lit
a cigarette and stretched himself in his chair. He had been interviewed by
all manner of people, had listened to dozens of suspicious stories. His work
had been intricate and at times full of detail. On the whole, a good day's
work, he decided, and he had been warmly thanked over the wires by a
Brigadier-General at Harwich for his arrest and exposure of a man who had in
his possession a very wonderful plan of the Felixstowe land defences. He lit
a cigarette and glanced at his watch. Just then the door was hurriedly
opened. Ambrose came in without even the usual ceremony of knocking. He held
a worn piece of paper in his hand. There was a triumphant ring in his tone as
he looked up from it towards his chief.

"I've done it, sir!" he exclaimed. "Stumbled across it quite by accident.
I've got the whole code. It's based upon the leading articles in the Times of
certain dates. Here's this last message--'Leave London June 4th. Have flares
midnight Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's steps, gardens in front of Savoy. Your
last report received.'"

"'Leave London June 4th,'" Thomson repeated, glancing at his
calendar,--"to-day! 'Have flares,'--Zeppelins, Ambrose!"

The clerk nodded.

"I thought of them at once, sir," he agreed. "That's a very plain and
distinct warning in a remarkably complicated code, and it's addressed--to Sir
Alfred Anselman."

A smouldering light flashed in Thomson's eyes.

"Ambrose," he declared, "you're a brick. I sha'n't forget this. Just find
out at once if the Chief's in his room, please."

There followed half an hour of breathless happenings. From the Chief's room
Thomson hurried over to the Admiralty. Here he was taken by one of the men
whom he had called to see, on to the flat roof, and they stood there, facing
eastwards. Twilight was falling and there was scarcely a breath of air.

"It's a perfect night," the official remarked. "If they start at the right
time, they'll get here before any one can see them. All the same, we're
warning the whole coast, and our gun-stations will be served all night."

"Shall we have a chance, do you think, of hitting any of them?" Thomson asked.

The sailor winked.

"There are a couple of gun-stations I know of not far from here," he said. "I
tell you they've got armament there which will make our friends tear their
hair' shells that burst in the air, mind, too, which you needn't mind letting
'em have as quick as we can fire 'em off. I shall try and get on to one of
those stations myself at midnight."

"What time do you think they'd attack if they do get over?"

The other took out his watch and considered the subject.

"Of course," he reflected, "they'll want to make the most of the darkness, but
I think what they'll aim at chiefly is to get here unobserved. Therefore, I
think they won't start until it's dark, probably from three or four different
bases. That means they'll be here a little before dawn. I shall just motor
my people up to Harrow and get back again by midnight."

Thomson left the Admiralty, a little later, and took a taxi to Berkeley
Square. The servant hesitated a little at his inquiry.

"Miss Geraldine is in, sir, I believe," he said. "She is in the morning-room
at the moment."

"I shall not keep her," Thomson promised. "I know that it is nearly
dinner-time."

The man ushered him across the hall and threw open the door of the little room
at the back of the stairs.

"Major Thomson, madam," he announced.

Geraldine rose slowly from the couch on which she had been seated. Standing
only a few feet away from her was Granet. The three looked at one another for
a moment and no word was spoken. It was Geraldine who first recovered
herself.

"Hugh!" she exclaimed warmly. "Why, you are another unexpected visitor!"

"I should not have come at such a time," Thomson explained, "but I wanted just
to have a word with you, Geraldine. If you are engaged, your mother would
do."

"I am not in the least engaged," Geraldine assured him, "and I have been
expecting to hear from you all day. I got back from Boulogne last night."

"None the worse, I am glad to see," Thomson remarked.

She shivered a little. Then she looked him full in the face and her eyes were
full of unspoken things.

"Thanks to you," she murmured. "However," she added, with a little laugh, "I
don't want to frighten you away, and I know what would happen if I began to
talk about our adventure. I am sorry, Captain Granet," she went on, turning
towards where he was standing, "but I cannot possibly accept your aunt's
invitation. It was very good of her to ask me and very kind of you to want me
to go so much, but to-night I could not leave my mother. She has been having
rather a fit of nerves about Ralph the last few days, and she hates being left
alone."

"Captain Granet is trying to persuade you to leave London this evening?"
Thomson asked quietly.

"He wants me very much to go down to Lady Anselman's at Reigate to-night,"
Geraldine explained. "I really accepted Lady Anselman's invitation some days
ago, but that was before mother was so unwell. I have written your aunt,
Captain Granet," she continued, turning to him. "Do please explain to her how
disappointed I am, and it was very nice of you to come and ask me to change my
mind."

There was brief but rather curious silence. Granet had turned away form
Geraldine as though to address Thomson. He was meeting now the silent, half
contemptuous challenge of the latter's eyes.

"Captain Granet is showing great consideration for your comfort and safety,"
Thomson remarked.

Granet for a moment forgot himself. His eyes flashed. He was half angry,
half terrified.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

Thomson made no immediate answer. He seemed to be pondering over his words,
his expression was inscrutable. Geraldine looked from one to the other.

"There is something between you two which I don't understand," she declared.

"There is a very great deal about Captain Granet which I am only just
beginning to understand," Thomson said calmly. "You should find his
solicitude about your movements this evening a great compliment, Geraldine.
It arises entirely from his desire to spare you the shock of what may turn out
yet to be a very lamentable catastrophe."

"You two men are quite incomprehensible," Geraldine sighed. "If only either
of you would speak plainly!"

Thomson bowed.

"Perhaps I may be able to indulge you presently," he observed. "Since you
have failed to persuade Miss Conyers to leave London, Captain Granet," he went
on, turning towards the latter, "may I ask what your own movements are likely
to be?"

"You may not," was the passionate reply. "They are no concern of yours."

"They are unfortunately," Thomson retorted, "my very intimate concern. This,
you will remember, is your ninth day of grace. It is not my desire that you
should suffer unduly for your humane visit here, but I might remind you that
under the circumstances it is a little compromising. No, don't interrupt me!
We understand one another, I am quite sure."

Granet had taken a step backwards. His face for a moment was blanched, his
lips opened but closed again without speech. Thomson was watching him
closely.

"Precisely," he went on. "You have guessed the truth, I can see. We have
been able, within the last few hours, to decode that very interesting message
which reached your uncle some little time ago."

Geraldine's bewilderment increased. Granet's almost stupefied silence seemed
to amaze her.

"Hugh, what does it all mean?" she cried. "Is Captain Granet in trouble
because he has come here to warn me of something? He has not said a word
except to beg me to go down into the country tonight."

"And he as begged you to do that," Thomson said, "because he is one of those
privileged few who have been warned that to-night or to-morrow morning is the
time selected for the Zeppelin raid on London of which we have heard so much.
Oh! He knows all about it, and his uncle, and a great many of the guests they
have gathered together. They'll all be safe enough at Reigate! Come, Captain
Granet, what have you to say about it?"

Granet drew himself up. He looked every inch a soldier, and, curiously
enough, he seemed in his bearing and attitude to be respecting the higher rank
by virtue of which Thomson had spoken.

"To-morrow, as you have reminded me, is my tenth day, sir," he said. "I shall
report myself at your office at nine o'clock. Good-bye, Miss Conyers! I hope
that even though I have failed, Major Thomson may persuade you to change your
mind."

He left the room. Geraldine was so amazed that she made no movement towards
ringing the bell. She turned instead towards Thomson.

"What does it mean? You must tell me!" she insisted. "I am not a child."

"It means that what I have told you all along is the truth," Thomson replied
earnestly. "You thought, Geraldine, that I was narrow and suspicious. I had
powers and an office and responsibilities, too, which you knew nothing of.
That young man who has just left the room is in the pay of Germany. So is his
uncle."

"What, Sir Alfred Anselman?" she exclaimed. "Are you mad, Hugh?"

"Not in the least," he assured her. "These are bald facts."

"But Sir Alfred Anselman! He has done such wonderful things for the country.
They all say that he ought to have been in the Cabinet. Hugh, you can't be
serious!"

"I am so far serious," Thomson declared grimly, "that an hour ago we succeeded
in decoding a message from Holland to Sir Alfred Anselman, advising him to
leave London to-day. We are guessing what that means. We may be right and we
may be wrong. We shall see. I come to beg you to leave the city for
twenty-four hours. I find Granet on the same errand."

"But they may have warned him--some personal friend may have done it," she
insisted. "He is a man with world-wide friends and world-wide connections."

"They why didn't he bring the warning straight to the Admiralty?" Thomson
argued. "If he were a patriotic Englishman, do you think that any other
course was open to him? It won't do, Geraldine. I know more about Captain
Granet than I am going to tell you at this moment. Shall we leave that
subject? Can't we do something to persuade your mother to take you a little
way from town? You can collect some of your friends, if you like. You ought
to take Olive, for instance. We don't want a panic, but there is no reason
why you shouldn't tell any of your friends quietly."

The door was suddenly opened. The Admiral put his head in.

"Sorry!" he apologised. "I thought I heard that young Granet was here."

"He has been and gone, father," Geraldine told him. "You'd better see what
you can do with father," she added, turning to Thomson.

"What's wrong, eh? What's wrong? What's wrong?" the Admiral demanded.

"The fact is, Sir Seymour," Thomson explained, "we've had notice--not exactly
notice, but we've decoded a secret dispatch which gives us reason to believe
that a Zeppelin raid will be attempted on London during the next twenty-four
hours. I came round to try and induce Geraldine to have you all move away
until the thing's over."

"I'll be damned if I do!" the Admiral grunted. "What, sneak off and leave
five or six million others who haven't had the tip, to see all the fun? Not
I! If what you say is true, Thomson,--and I am going straight back to the
Admiralty,--I shall find my way on to one of the air stations myself, and the
women can stay at home and get ready to be useful."

Geraldine passed her hand through her father's arm.

"That's the sort of people we are," she laughed, turning to Thomson. "All the
same, Hugh, it was very nice of you to come," she added. "I couldn't see us
scuttling away into the country, you know. I shall go round and persuade
Olive to stay with me. I am expecting to return to Boulogne almost at once,
to the hospital there, to bring some more wounded back. I may get a little
practice here."

Thomson picked up his hat.

"Well," he said quietly, "I cannot complain of your decision. After all, it
is exactly what I expected."

He made is adieux and departed. The Admiral sniffed as he glanced after him.

"Very good chap, Thomson," he remarked, "but he doesn't quite understand. I
bet you that fine young fellow Granet would never have suggested our running
away like frightened sheep! Come along, my dear, we'll go and dine."

CHAPTER XXXV

About three o'clock the next morning Thomson was awakened by a light touch
upon his shoulder. He sprang up from the couch upon which he had thrown
himself. Ambrose was standing over him. He was still in his room at the War
Office, and fully dressed.

"Mr. Gordon Jones has rung up from Downing Street, sir," he announced. "He is
with the Prime Minister. They want to know if you could step across."

"I'll go at once," Thomson agreed,--"just sponge my eyes and have a brush up.
Nothing else fresh, Ambrose?"

"Nothing at all sir," the young man replied. "All the newspapers in London
have rung up but of course we have not answered any of them. You'll be
careful outside, please? There isn't a single light anywhere, and the streets
are like pitch. A man tried to use an electric torch on the other side of the
way just now, and they shot him. There's a double line of sentries all round
from Whitehall corner."

"No flares this time, eh?" Thomson muttered. "All right, Ambrose, I think I
can feel my way there."

He descended into the street but for a few moments he found himself hopelessly
lost at sea. So far as he could see there was no light nor any glimmer of
one. He reached the corner of the street like a blind man, by tapping the
kerbstone with his cane. Arrived here, he stood for a moment in the middle of
the road, bareheaded. There was not a breath of wind anywhere. He made his
way carefully down towards Downing Street, meeting few people, and still
obliged to grope rather than walk. Along Downing Street he made his way by
the railings and rang the bell at last at the Premier's house. He was shown
at once into the council room. The four or five men who were seated around a
table, and who looked up at his entrance, bore every one of them, household
names. The Premier held out his hand.

"Good evening, Major Thomson," he began. "Please sit down and join us for a
moment."

Thomson was a little surprised at the gathering.

"You'll forgive my suggesting that this is likely to be a marked spot
to-night," he said.

The Premier smiled.

"Well, you could scarcely expect us to hide, could you, Major Thomson?" he
remarked. "In any case, there is not one of us who is not prepared to share
what the other citizens of London have to face. The country for the women and
children, if you please. We gather, sir, that it is chiefly through you that
we are in the fortunate position of being prepared to-night."

"It was through my action in a matter which I understand has been subjected to
a great deal of criticism," Thomson replied.

"I admit it frankly," the statesman acknowledged. "That particular matter,
the matter of your censorship of a certain letter, has been the subject of a
grave and earnest conference here between us all. We decided to send for you.
We telephoned first of all to the Chief but he told us that you were entirely
head of your department and responsible to no one, that you had been--forgive
me--a brilliant success, and that it was his intention to interfere in no
possible way with any course you chose to take. I may say that he intimated
as much to me when I went to him, simply furious because you had removed a
certain person from the list of those whose correspondence is free from
censorship."

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" Thomson asked.

"Listen to us while we put a matter to you from a common-sense point of view,"
Mr. Gordon Jones begged. "You see who we are. We are those upon whose
shoulders rests chiefly the task of ruling this country. I want to tell you
that we have come to a unanimous decision. We say nothing about the moral or
the actual guilt of Sir Alfred Anselman. How far he may have been concerned
in plotting with our country's enemies is a matter which we may know in the
future, but for the present--well, let's make a simple matter of it--we want
him left alone."

"You wish him to continue in his present high position?" Thomson said
slowly,--"a man who is convicted of having treasonable correspondence with our
enemy?"

"We wish him left alone," Mr. Gordon Jones continued earnestly, "not for his
own sake but for ours. When the time comes, later on, it may be possible for
us to deal with him. To-day, no words of mine could explain to you his exact
utility. He has a finger upon the money-markets of the world. He has wealth,
great wealth, and commands great wealth in every city. Frankly, this man as
an open enemy today could bring more harm upon us than if any neutral Power
you could name were to join the Triple Alliance. Remember, too, Major
Thomson, that there may be advantages to us in this waiting attitude. Since
your warning, his letters can be admitted to censorship. You have the control
of a great staff of military detectives; the resources of Scotland Yard, too,
are at your service. Have him watched day and night, his letters opened, his
every movement followed, but don't provoke him to open enmity. We don't want
him in the Tower. The scandal and the shock of it would do us enormous harm,
apart from the terrible financial panic which would ensue. We will see to it
that he does no further mischief than he may already have done. We make an
appeal to you, all of us here to-night. Be guided entirely by us in this
matter. You have rendered the country great service by your discovery.
Render it a greater one, Major Thomson, by keeping that discovery secret."