you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. "That's
just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
theatricals!"

"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage fright is,
just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!"

Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
House was still sitting.

"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that is risky,
that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"

Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.

"Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never reads
anything! Go on!"

"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what else is
most talked about?" He answered his own question. "The landing of the
Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"

"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would
fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"

"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
"How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do it? It would take
hundreds of men."

"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car. I
thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
how prepared you people are to m