is
expression as he walked towards the door.

CHAPTER VII

The two men who were supping together in the grillroom at the Cafe Milan
were talking with a seriousness which seemed a little out of keeping
with the rose-shaded lamps and the swaying music of the band from the
distant restaurant. Their conversation had started some hours before in
the club smoking-room and had continued intermittently throughout the
evening. It had received a further stimulus when Richard Hamel, who had
bought an Evening Standard on their way from the theatre a few minutes
ago, came across a certain paragraph in it which he read aloud.

"Hanged if I understand things over here, nowadays, Reggie!" he
declared, laying the paper down. "Here's another Englishman imprisoned
in Germany--this time at a place no one ever heard of before. I won't
try to pronounce it. What does it all mean? It's all very well to shrug
your shoulders, but when there are eighteen arrests within one week on a
charge of espionage, there must be something up."

For the first time Reginald Kinsley seemed inclined to discuss the
subject seriously. He drew the paper towards him and read the little
paragraph, word by word. Then he gave some further order to an attentive
maitre d'hotel and glanced around to be sure that they were not
overheard.

"Look here, Dick, old chap," he said, "you are just back from abroad
and you are not quite in the hang of things yet. Let me ask you a plain
question. What do you think of us all?"

"Think of you?" Hamel repeated, a little doubtfully. "Do you mean
personally?"

"Take it any way you like," Kinsley replied. "Look at me. Nine years
ago we played cricket in the same eleven. I don't look much like cricket
now, do I?"

Hamel looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a man who was doubtless
still young, Kinsley had certainly an aged appearance. The hair about
his temples was grey; there were lines about his mouth and forehead. He
had the air of one who lived in an atmosphere of anxiety.

"To me," Hamel declared frankly, "you look worried. If I hadn't heard so
much of the success of your political career and all the rest of it, I
should have thought that things were going badly with you."

"They've gone well enough with me personally," Kinsley admitted, "but
I'm only one of many. Politics isn't the game it was. The Foreign Office
especially is ageing its men fast these few years. We've been going
through hell, Hamel, and we are