PART III.

CHAPTER I.

The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St
Egbert's-on-Sea.

"Aha!" said the Baron, "zis is more fresh zan London!"

"Yes," replied his friend; "we are now in the presence of that stimulating
element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and
dyspeptic Britons with an appetite."

A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats
and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the
shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove
the Baron's mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker
that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed
suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now
and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say, "Aha, Bonker!
zat is not so bad, eh?"

And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some
entertaining distraction in St Egbert's, would look at the owners of these
faces with a prospector's eye and his own unrivalled assurance.

They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a
different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one
kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.

"My vriend Bonker," said he, "is it not somevere about time for loncheon,
eh?"

"I should say it was precisely the hour."

"Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von
hungry!"

The Baron had taken a private suite of rooms on the first floor of the
best hotel in St Egbert's, and after a very substantial lunch Mr Bunker
stretched himself on the luxurious sitting-room sofa and announced his
intention of having a nap.

"I shall go out," said the Baron. "You vill not gom?"

"I shall leave you to make a single-handed conquest," replied Mr Bunker.
"Besides, I have a little matter I want to look into."

So the Baron arranged his hat airily, at what he had perceived to be the
most fashionable and effective English angle, and strutted off to the
esplanade.

It was about two hours later that he burst excitedly into the room,
crying, "Aha, mine Bonker! I haf disgovered zomzing!" and then he stopped
in some surprise. "Ello, vat make you, my vriend?"

His friend, in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a
dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you