ed a detailed description of her--just as
I have done--and they are now searching for her in Cromer, Runton, and
Sheringham, believing her to be staying somewhere along this coast. She
was dressed in a pale blue kit of a distinctly seaside cut, so the
police are hoping to find her. Perhaps she doesn't yet know of the
tragic fate that has befallen poor Dick."

"I wonder who the girl can be? No doubt she'd be able to make a very
interesting statement--if they could only discover her."

"I think she left Cromer last night," Noel Barclay suggested to his
companion.

"She would, if she were in any way implicated. Perhaps she has already
gone!"

"No, I don't agree. I believe she is still in ignorance."

"What, I wonder, was the motive for their meeting here--in this quiet,
out-of-the-world little place?" asked Goring. "If he wanted to see her,
he might have motored to wherever she was staying, and not have brought
her over here in a motor-bus. No, it was a secret meeting--that's my
opinion--and, as it was secret, it probably had some connection with the
tragedy which afterwards occurred."

The two men were now close to the "Gap," or steep, inclined cart-road
which ran down to the sands. On their right, a little way from the road,
stood a small, shed-like building where the rocket life-saving apparatus
of the Board of Trade was housed. In front, the roadway, and indeed all
down the "Gap" and across the sands to where the waves lapped the shore,
had been recently opened, for upon the previous day the shore end of
the new German telegraph-cable connecting England with Nordeney had been
laid. At that moment, while the cable-ship, on its return across the
North Sea, was hourly paying out the cable, a German telegraph engineer
was seated within the rocket-station, constantly making tests upon the
submerged line between the shore and the ship.

Up from the trench beside the rocket-house came the cable--black,
coiled, and snake-like, about three inches in thickness--its end
disappearing within the small building.

"Been inside to-day?" asked Goring, just as they were passing.

"No. Let's see how they are progressing," the other said; and both
turned into the little gate and asked permission to enter where the
tests were being made.

Herr Strantz, the German engineer, a dark-haired, round-faced,
middle-aged man, came forward, and, recognising the pair as visitors of
the previous day, greeted them warmly in rather imperfect