of brains inside that funny pyramidal head.

As I sat beside the stove I was casting back to think if I had got the
slightest clue to my real job. There seemed to be nothing so far.
Stumm had talked of a von Einem woman who was interested in his
department, perhaps the same woman as the Hilda he had mentioned the
day before to the Under-Secretary. There was not much in that. She
was probably some minister's or ambassador's wife who had a finger in
high politics. If I could have caught the word Stumm had whispered to
Gaudian which made him start and look askance at me! But I had only
heard a gurgle of something like 'uhnmantl', which wasn't any German
word that I knew.

The heat put me into a half-doze and I began dreamily to wonder what
other people were doing. Where had Blenkiron been posting to in that
train, and what was he up to at this moment? He had been hobnobbing
with ambassadors and swells--I wondered if he had found out anything.
What was Peter doing? I fervently hoped he was behaving himself, for I
doubted if Peter had really tumbled to the delicacy of our job. Where
was Sandy, too? As like as not bucketing in the hold of some Greek
coaster in the Aegean. Then I thought of my battalion somewhere on the
line between Hulluch and La Bassee, hammering at the Boche, while I was
five hundred miles or so inside the Boche frontier.

It was a comic reflection, so comic that it woke me up. After trying
in vain to find a way of stoking that stove, for it was a cold night, I
got up and walked about the room. There were portraits of two decent
old fellows, probably Gaudian's parents. There were enlarged
photographs, too, of engineering works, and a good picture of Bismarck.
And close to the stove there was a case of maps mounted on rollers.

I pulled out one at random. It was a geological map of Germany, and
with some trouble I found out where I was. I was an enormous distance
from my goal and moreover I was clean off the road to the East. To go
there I must first go to Bavaria and then into Austria. I noticed the
Danube flowing eastwards and remembered that that was one way to
Constantinople.

Then I tried another map. This one covered a big area, all Europe from
the Rhine and as far east as Persia. I guessed that it was meant to
show the Baghdad railway and the through routes from Germany to
Mesopotamia. There were markings on it; and, as I looked closer, I saw
that there were dates scribbled i