able as ever, and he stared at me till I nearly threw my wine
glass at him."

"He did not speak to you?" Peter Ruff asked.

"I was afraid that he was going to," Miss Brown said, "but fortunately
he met a friend who came to his table and lunched with him."

"A friend," Ruff remarked. "Good! What was he like?"

"Fair, slight, Teutonic," Miss Brown answered. "He wore thick
spectacles, and his moustache was positively yellow."

Ruff nodded.

"Go on," he said.

"Towards the end of luncheon," she continued, "an American came up to
them."

"An American?" Peter Ruff interrupted. "How do you know that?"

Miss Brown smiled.

"He was clean-shaven and he wore neat clothes," she said. "He talked
with an accent you could have cut with a knife and he had a Baedeker
sticking out of his pocket. After luncheon, they all three went away to
the smoking room."

Peter Ruff nodded.

"Anything else?" he asked.

The girl smiled triumphantly.

"Yes!" she declared. "There was something else--something which I
think you will find interesting. At the next table to me there was a
man--alone. Can you guess who he was?"

"John Dory," Ruff said, calmly.

The girl was disappointed.

"You knew!" she exclaimed.

"My dear Violet," he said, "I did not send you there on a fool's
errand."

"There is something doing, then?" she exclaimed.

"There is likely," he answered, grimly, "to be a great deal doing!"

The two men who stood upon the hill, and Peter Ruff, who lay upon his
stomach behind a huge boulder, looked upon a new thing.

Far down in the valley from out of a black shed--the only sign of man's
handiwork for many miles--it came--something grey at first, moving
slowly as though being pushed down a slight incline, then afloat in the
air, gathering speed--something between a torpedo with wings and a
great prehistoric insect. Now and then it described strange circles, but
mostly it came towards them as swift and as true as an arrow shot from a
bow. The two men looked at one another--the shorter, to whose cheeks the
Cumberland winds had brought no trace of colour, gave vent to a hoarse
exclamation.

"He's done it!" he growled.

"Wait!" the other answered.

Over their heads the thing wheeled, and seemed to stand still in the
air. The beating of the engine was so faint that Peter Ruff from behind
the boulder, could hear all that was said. A man leaned out from his
seat--a man with wan cheeks but blazing eyes.

"Listen,