eped in through the crack of one of the doors,
and he pointed out to me a tall, fair-haired, middle-aged man whose
soft-pleated shirt-front and the cut of whose dress-coat betrayed him to
be a foreigner. At that moment he was leaning over the chair of a pretty
little dark-haired woman in pale blue, who struck me as a foreigner
also, and who wore twisted twice around her neck a magnificent rope of
large pearls.

"That's von Rausch," William explained. "And look at the guv'nor!" he
added. "He seems to be having a good time with the thin woman over
there. He's talking in French to her."

My eyes wandered in search of Pawson, and I saw that he was seated at
one of the bridge-tables silently contemplating his hand.

The German spy was evidently a great favourite with the ladies. Perhaps
his popularity with the fair sex had gained for him entry to that little
circle of the elegant world. Two young girls approached him, laughing
gaily and slowly fanning themselves. He then chatted with all three in
English which had only a slight trace of Teutonic accent.

And that man was, I reflected, the head of a horde of secret agents
which the German War Office had flung upon our eastern coast. To expose
and crush them all was surely the patriotic duty of any Englishman.

The magnificent old mansion with its splendid paintings, its antique
furniture, its armour, its bric-a-brac, old silver, and splendid
heirlooms of the Edgcotts rang with the laughter of the assembly as two
young subalterns indulged in humorous horse-play.

The appearance of the old sphinx-like family butler, however, compelled
us to leave our point of observation, and for an hour I strolled with
William out in the park in the balmy moonlight of the summer night.

"There'll be a sensation before long," declared the valet to me. "You
watch."

"In what way?" I inquired, with curiosity.

"Wait and see," he laughed, as though he possessed knowledge of what was
intended.

Next day I drove my master and the German Colonel over to Nottingham,
where we put up for an hour at the Black Boy Hotel. This struck me as
curious, for I recollected that William had been sent down from London
with a message to some person named Raven staying at that hotel.

All the way from Edgcott, through Oakham, Melton Mowbray, and Trent, I
had endeavoured to catch some of the conversation between the pair in
the car behind me. The noise and rattle, however, prevented me from
overhearing mu