ch, but the stray sentences which did reach me when I
slowed down to change my speeds showed them to be on the most friendly
terms.

Evidently the spy was entirely unsuspicious of his friend.

At the hotel, after I had put up the car, I saw my master and the German
speaking with a tall, thin, consumptive-looking man in black, whose
white tie showed him to be a dissenting minister. He was clean-shaven,
aged fifty, and had an unusually protruding chin.

All three went out together and walked along the street chatting. When
they had gone I went back into the yard, and on inquiry found that the
minister was the Reverend Richard Raven, of the Baptist Missionary
Society.

He had been a missionary in China, and had addressed several meetings in
Nottingham and the neighbourhood on behalf of the society.

Why, I wondered, had Bob Brackenbury, so essentially a man about town,
come there to consult a Baptist missionary, and accompanied, too, by the
man he was scheming to unmask?

But the ways of the Secret Service were devious and crooked, I argued.
There was method in it all. Had Ray and I been mistaken after all? So I,
too, lit a cigarette, and strolled out into the bustling provincial
street awaiting my master and his friend.

After an hour and a half the trio came back and had a drink together in
the smoking-room--the missionary taking lemonade--and then I brought
round the car, and we began the return journey of about sixty-five
miles.

"What do you think of it now?" asked my master of his companion as soon
as we were away from the hotel.

"Excellent!" was the German's reply. "It only now lies with her, eh?"
And he laughed lightly.

Dinner was over when we returned, and Captain Kinghorne was profuse in
his apologies to his host. I had previously been warned to say nothing
of where we had been, and I heard my master explain that we had passed
through Huntingdon, where a tyre-burst had delayed us.

I became puzzled. Yes, it was certainly both interesting and exciting.
Little did the gallant German Colonel dream of the sword of England's
wrath suspended above his head.

Nearly a week passed. Captain Kinghorne, D.S.O., and Mr. Pawson, of
Goldfields, Nevada, shared, I saw, with the Colonel the highest
popularity among members of the house-party. With Mr. Henry Seymour they
had become on particularly friendly terms. There were picnics, tennis,
and a couple of dances to which all the local notabilities were bidden.
A