in a dozen places."

"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman.
"Now, if this had happened in my native land--"

He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car
that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles,
tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down
the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki
clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying
from its running boards. Before they could find their voices
a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at
the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
into the night.

"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop?
As I said before, what we want is a live one."

Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.

"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of
a mile from here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern
Railroad, where we visit the night telegraph operator and
give him the surprise party of his life."

The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so
quietly that, when the operator heard them, they already
surrounded him. He saw three German soldiers with fierce
upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets, with long brown
rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth without a coat