ourney, lasting till past eight in the evening; but there I
should only be an hour from Norden by rail.

And at Esens?

All day long I strove for light on the central mystery, collecting
from my diary, my memory, my imagination, from the map, the
time-table, and Davies's grubby jottings, every elusive atom of
material. Sometimes I issued from a reverie with a start, to find a
phlegmatic Dutch peasant staring strangely at me over his china pipe.
I was more careful over the German border. Davies's paper I soon knew
by heart. I pictured him writing it with his cramped fist in his
corner by the stove, fighting against sleep, absently striking salvos
of matches, while I snored in my bunk; absently diverging into
dreams, I knew, of a rose-brown face under dewy hair and a grey
tam-o'-shanter; though not a word of her came into the document. I
smiled to see his undying faith in the 'channel theory' reconciled at
the eleventh hour, with new data touching the neglected 'land'.

The result was certainly interesting, but it left me cold. That there
existed in the German archives some such scheme of defence for the
North Sea coast was very likely indeed. The seven islands, with their
seven shallow channels (though, by the way, two of them, the twin
branches of the Ems, are by no means so shallow), were a very fair
conjecture, and fitted in admirably with the channel theory, whose
intrinsic merits I had always recognized; my constant objection
having been that it did not go nearly far enough to account for our
treatment. The ring of railway round the peninsula, with Esens at the
apex, was suggestive, too; but the same objection applied. Every
country with a maritime frontier has, I suppose, secret plans of
mobilization for its defence, but they are not such as could be
discovered by passing travellers, not such as would warrant stealthy
searches, or require for their elaboration so recondite a
meeting-place as Memmert. Dollmann was another weak point; Dollmann
in England, spying. All countries, Germany included, have spies in
their service, dirty though necessary tools; but Dollmann in such
intimate association with the principal plotters on this side;
Dollmann rich, influential, a power in local affairs--it was clear he
was no ordinary spy.

And here I detected a hesitation in Davies's rough sketch, a
reluctance, as it were, to pursue a clue to its logical end. He spoke
of a German scheme of coast defence, and in the next breat