orses. He knew that a hue and cry could have only one result--he
would be pulled down by a score of hands. Moreover, with the sight of
that suspicious Teuton face, its customary boorish leer now replaced by
a surly inquisitiveness, came the first glimmer of a fantastically
daring way of rescuing Irene Beresford.

He advanced, smiling pleasantly. "It's all right, Heinrich," he said.
"I've arrived by train from Berlin, and the station was crowded. Being
an acrobat, I took a bounce. What?"

The engine-cleaner was not a quick-witted person. He scowled, but
allowed Dalroy to come near--too near.

"I believe you're a _verdammt_ Engl----" he began.

But the popular German description of a Briton died on his lips, because
Dalroy put a good deal of science and no small leaven of brute force
into a straight punch which reached that cluster of nerves known to
pugilism as "the point." The German fell as though he had been
pole-axed, and his thick skull rattled on the pavement.

Dalroy grabbed the lamp before the oil could gush out, placed it upright
on the ground, and divested the man of blouse, baggy breeches, and
sabots. Luckily, since every second was precious, he found that he was
able to wedge his boots into the sabots, which he could not have kept on
his feet otherwise. His training as a soldier had taught him the
exceeding value of our Fifth Henry's advice to the British army gathered
before Harfleur:

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears
Then imitate the action of the tiger.

The warring tiger does not move slowly. Half-a-minute after his would-be
captor had crashed headlong to the hard cobbles of Aix-la-Chapelle,
Dalroy was creeping between two wagons, completing a hasty toilet by
tearing off collar and tie, and smearing his face and hands with oil and
grease from lamp and cap. Even as he went he heard a window of the
waiting-room being flung open, and the excited cries which announced the
discovery of a half-naked body lying beneath in the gloom.

He saw now that to every van was harnessed a pair of horses, their heads
deep in nose-bags, while men in the uniform of the Commissariat Corps
were grouped around an officer who was reading orders. The vans were
sheeted in black tarpaulins. With German attention to detail, their
destination, contents, and particular allotment were stencilled on the
covers in white pai