our suspicions were at last aroused.

Rosser often spent the evening with his friend Barker at theatres and
music-halls, and it was evident that the shipping clerk paid for
everything. Once or twice Barker went out to Rosser's house in Dilston
Road, close to the Nun's Moor Recreation Ground, and there spent the
evening with his wife and family.

We took turns at keeping observation, but one night Ray, who had been
out following the pair, entered my room at the hotel, saying:

"Barker is persuading his friend to buy a new house in the Bentinck
Road. It's a small, neat little red-brick villa, just completed, and the
price is three hundred and fifty pounds."

"Well?" I asked.

"Well, to-night I overheard part of their conversation. Barker actually
offers to lend his friend half the money."

"Ah!" I cried. "On certain conditions, I suppose?"

"No conditions were mentioned, but, no doubt, he intends to get poor
Rosser into his toils, that he'll be compelled to supply some
information in order to save himself and his family from ruin. The spies
of Germany are quite unscrupulous, remember!"

"Yes," I remarked. "The truth is quite clear. We must protect Rosser
from this. He's no doubt tempting the unsuspecting fellow, and posing
as a man of means. Rosser doesn't know that his generous friend is a
spy."

For the next few days it fell to my lot to watch Barker. I followed him
on Saturday afternoon to Tynemouth, where it seemed his hobby was to
snap-shot incoming and outgoing ships at the estuary, at the same time
asking of seafaring men in the vicinity how far the boat would be from
the shore where he was standing.

Both part of that afternoon and part of Sunday he was engaged in taking
some measurements near the Ridges Reservoir, North Shields, afterwards
going on to Tynemouth again, and snap-shotting the castle from various
positions, the railway and its tunnels, the various slips, the jetty,
the fish quay, the harbour, and the Narrows. Indeed, he seemed to be
making a most careful photographic survey of the whole town.

He carried with him a memorandum book, in which he made many notes. All
this he did openly, in full presence of passers-by, and even of the
police, for who suspects German spies in Tynemouth?

About six o'clock on Sunday afternoon he entered the Royal Station
Hotel, took off his light overcoat, and, hanging it in the hall, went
into the coffee-room to order tea.

I had followed him in order to h