The Kingdom of the Blind by E. Phillips Oppenheim (page 4)

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