imed softly. "We're getting on with the romance all right!"

"During the momentary absence of this fellow and his agent from the
carriage," Norgate proceeded, "I possessed myself of a slip of paper
which had become detached from the packet of documents they had been
examining. It consisted of a list of names mostly of people resident in
the United Kingdom, purporting to be Selingman's agents. I venture to
believe that this list is a precise record of the principal German spies
in this country."

"German spies!" Mr. Hebblethwaite murmured. "Whew!"

He sipped his champagne.

"That list," Norgate went on, "is in my pocket. I may add that although I
was careful to keep up the fiction of not understanding German, and
although I informed Herr Selingman that I had seen the paper in question
blow out of the window, he nevertheless gave me that night a drugged
whisky and soda, and during the time I slept he must have been through
every one of my possessions. I found my few letters and papers turned
upside down, and even my pockets had been ransacked."

"Where was the paper, then?" Mr. Hebblethwaite enquired.

"In an inner pocket of my pyjamas," Norgate explained. "I had them made
with a sort of belt inside, at the time I was a king's messenger."

Mr. Hebblethwaite played with his tie for a moment and drank a little
more champagne.

"Could I have a look at the list?" he asked, as though with a sudden
inspiration.

Norgate passed it across the table to him. Mr. Hebblethwaite adjusted his
pince-nez, gave a little start as he read the first name, leaned back in
his chair as he came to another, stared at Norgate about half-way down
the list, as though to make sure that he was in earnest, and finally
finished it in silence. He folded it up and handed it back.

"Well, well!" he exclaimed, a little pointlessly. "Now tell me, Norgate,
you showed this list down there?"--jerking his head towards the street.

"I did," Norgate admitted.

"And what did they say?"

"Just what you might expect men whose lives are spent within the four
walls of a room in Downing Street to say," Norgate replied. "You are
half inclined to make fun of me yourself, Hebblethwaite, but at any
rate I know you have a different outlook from theirs. Old Carew was
frantically polite. He even declared the list to be most interesting! He
rambled on for about a quarter of an hour on the general subject of the
spy mania. German espionage, he told me, was one of