pthorpe Road could not have failed to observe the
trouble that it was apparently giving the local authorities. A
fatality seemed to brood over this unfortunate thoroughfare. First of
all the telephone mains seemed to go wrong. Workmen came, and later
there arrived a huge roll of lead-covered cable. Labour was scarce,
and never did labourers work less industriously for their hire.

On the morning after the arrival of the men, Mr. Montagu Naylor paused
at the spot where they were working, and for a minute or two stood
watching them with interest.

Was there any danger of the telephone system being interrupted?

No, the cable was being laid as a precaution. The existing cable was
showing faults.

Mr. Naylor passed on his way, and from time to time would exchange
greetings with the men. They were extremely civil fellows, he decided.
Mr. Naylor felt very English.

The telephone men had not completed their work when the water-main, as
if jealous of the care and attention being lavished upon a rival
system, developed some strange and dangerous symptoms, involving the
picking up of the road.

Again Mr. Naylor showed interest, and learned that the water pressure
was not all that it should be in the neighbourhood, and it was thought
that some foreign substance had got into the pipes. Just as the
watermen were preparing to pack up and take a leisurely departure, two
men, their overalls smeared and spotted with red-lead, arrived at the
end of the street with a hand-barrow.

In due course a cutting of some fifteen or twenty feet was made in the
roadway, and the reek of stale gas assailed the nostrils of the
passer-by.

Obviously some shadow of misfortune brooded over Apthorpe Road, for no
sooner were these men beginning to pack up their tools, than the
road-men arrived, with a full-blooded steam-roller, bent upon ploughing
up and crushing down Apthorpe Road to a new and proper symmetry. In
short the thoroughfare in which Mr. Montagu Naylor lived seemed never
to be without workmen by day, and by night watchmen to protect
municipal property from depredation.

"I'm not so sure," remarked Malcolm Sage to Thompson who had entered
his room soon after Colonel Walton had gone to pay his call at 110,
Downing Street, "that the menage Naylor isn't a subject for
investigation by the Food Controller."

Thompson grinned.

"Eighty pounds of potatoes seems to be a generous week's supply for
three people."

"And other things