and one of the musicians stepped down from the
platform and came up to them.

"You must not make a disturbance here, sir," he said rudely, and the
next moment he was flung back across an adjoining table with a cut lip.

Dennis swung round as people sprang to their feet, but Ottilie Von
Dussel was making her way swiftly towards a neighbouring door.

"Stop that woman!" he shouted. "She is a German spy!" But everybody was
talking at once, and the white cap vanished out of sight.

"I shall report you, sir," thundered Dennis to the loquacious Major,
flourishing the leaf he had secured. "Every word of your conversation
has been written down. There was a carbon in that book, and that
she-fiend has escaped with the duplicate. Within forty-eight hours the
German headquarters will receive information that may cost us a thousand
lives!"

CHAPTER XXIII

"Gas!"

The hubbub in the restaurant was tremendous. Well-dressed people can
jostle and clamour and crush just as selfishly as anybody else, and
those of the lunchers who were not near enough stood up on their chairs
to get a better view.

The musician picked himself up with a fried sole embossed on the back of
his dress coat and two portions of hot soup running down his neck, to
say nothing of blobs of mashed potato and the contents of overturned
cruets all over him.

"I've got one of you, anyhow," said Dennis in German, as he seized him
by the collar. "You'd better have sat tight among your fiddles, and
allowed Madame von Dussel to play her own dirty game."

If the musician's look could have killed, there would have been another
vacancy in the Reedshires.

The cause of all the tumult confronted Dennis, purple with indignation,
and began to bluster. But another officer had wormed himself resolutely
forward through the crush.

"I want to know what the deuce you mean, sir!" demanded the indignant
major, but the new-comer interrupted him.

"I am the Assistant Provost-Marshal," he said. "What is the meaning of
this fracas?"

"The explanation is very simple, sir," replied Dennis, handing him the
slip of paper. "My friend and I were astonished to hear this officer
talking so unguardedly. It is charitable to suppose that he has taken
too much wine, and when I expostulated with him I recognised one of the
waitresses as a remarkably clever German spy."

The A.P.M. nodded.

"I gathered that," he said. "I will ask you, gentlemen, to accompany me
to the manager's