d which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one
symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt
should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces
in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may
shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye.
And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious
one and not as a lark."

They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the
boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to
the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a
golden vapour.

It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland,
turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw
the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British
Empire assuming sovereignty.

For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet
was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving
majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of
smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding
smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as
though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward
in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a
man-made Kiel.

And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he
arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the
almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer
train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded,
sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up
strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:

THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS

SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED

MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,
INTERNATIONAL SPY

And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of
the papers offered.

But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that--glimpses
of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces
where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the
city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads,
disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing ev