eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats
were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke.
Save for these the sea was empty.

By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an
afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle
and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the
local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver
of the char à banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well
known and well liked.

Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in
Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above a thick
tangle of fir-trees. Between the trees and the road rose a
wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the gate in the
wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by
bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new
apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became
rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to
his visor.

Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a
tiny lawn. In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a
tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast
dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table,
its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly
good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the
key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his