d the
virtuous wives, are always the most dangerous because least likely to
arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard hasn't a second
establishment hidden away somewhere in the Three Towns? The upper and
middle classes have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working
class betters do a bit that way too."

"All right. Have it your own way. We will assume for the sake of
security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he
wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of
some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I
grant leave?"

"Yes," said Dawson, "and do it handsomely. Give him four days and run
the sympathetic stunt. Offer him a Service pass by the Great Western.
Say how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh. Have him up now,
and put me somewhere close so that I can take a good look at the swine
when he comes in and when he goes out."

The Chief of the Dockyards shrugged his shoulders, placed Dawson in an
adjoining room, and summoned Maynard from the yard. The man, who was
dressed in the awful dead black of his class when a funeral is in
prospect, came up, and Dawson got a full sight of him. Maynard was
about thirty-five, well set up--for he had served in the
Territorials--and looked what he was, a first-rate workman of the best
type. Even Dawson, who trusted no one, was slightly shaken. "I have
never seen a man who looked less like a spy," muttered he; "but then,
those always make the most dangerous of spies. Why has he a mother in
Essex, and why has she died just now? Real mothers don't do these
things; they've more sense."

Maynard received his third-class pass, respectfully thanked his
Officer for his kindly expressed sympathy--which in his case was quite
genuine--and disappeared. Dawson jumped into the room again to take a
word of farewell. "I should know him anywhere," he cried. "I am going
by the same train in the same carriage. Good-bye."

Maynard reached the Great Western station in good time, and found a
carriage which was not overcrowded. He was carrying a small handbag.
At the last moment before the train started a prosperous-looking
passenger, with "commercial gentleman" written all over him, stepped
into the same compartment and seated himself in a vacant seat opposite
the bereaved workman. It was Dawson in one of his favourite roles.
"There is nothing less like a detective," he would say, "than a
middle-aged commercial