, thick or clear,
of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
again allowed his 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 a 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 turn, Carl
drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.

"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard.
"They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
know the moment has come!"

As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl sm