station, with its blended crowds
of dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburban
passengers pouring out every now and then from this or that platform,
like ants swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to what
had been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almost
furtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who is
constrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rather
not see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with English
over the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment buffets, and so
forth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on the post boxes, caught
his eye in quick succession.

He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck,
and followed him to the outer yard of the station, where a string of taxi-
cabs was being slowly absorbed by an outpouring crowd of travellers.

Portmanteaux, wraps, and a trunk or two, much be-labelled and
travel-worn, were stowed into a taxi, and Yeovil turned to give the
direction to the driver.

"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street."

"Berkschirestrasse, acht-und-zwanzig," echoed the man, a bulky spectacled
individual of unmistakable Teuton type.

"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street," repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab,
leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language.

A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a moment
or two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria Strasse
was lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the street. A
notice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming baths was also
written up in both languages. London had become a bi-lingual city, even
as Warsaw.

The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the
Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned
his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the
gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver,
who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning
into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in
front of the palace gates.

"Grossmutter Denkmal, yes," he announced, and resumed his journey.

Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and
pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a
stranger drifting from nowhere i