exchange, the unloaded weapon which
he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept
without proof the verbal assurances of the widow _Leigh_ that she was
one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And _Fritz_ committed an
unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by
his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in the
fireplace.

And so their schemes all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and
when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight
_deshabille_ there was every promise that the misdemeanants would
receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good
behaviour for the future.

Illustration:

"HANDS UP!"

"HANDS UP YOURSELF!"

_Carl Sanderson._ .. Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY.
_Christopher Brent._ .. Mr. DENNIS EADIE.

I understand, on good authority, that the tendency of the public at this
juncture of the War is to demand light refreshment. Well, they have it
here. For, though the subject deals with a serious problem of the hour,
it can be treated, and is treated, with a very permissible humour that
just stops short of farce. Some of the stage-devices, as I am assured by
my betters, may have a touch of antiquity, but their application is as
modern as can well be, and I should indeed be ungrateful if after an
entertainment so smoothly and dexterously administered I were to be
captious about origins or other matters of pedantry.

Mr. DENNIS EADIE, as _Brent_, both in his real character of detective
and in the assumed futility of his disguise as a genial idiot, was
equally excellent, and again proved his gift for quick-change artistry.
Miss MARY JERROLD'S _Fraeulein Schroeder_ was extraordinarily Teutonic in
all but her quiet humour, which she seemed to have caught from the
country of her adoption. The _Fritz_ of Mr. HENRY EDWARDS was another
delightful sketch, though his actual German birth and his allegation of
Dutch nationality were both belied by the red Italian corpuscles with
which the authors had inoculated him. Miss JEAN CADELL, as usual, played
a pale and fatuous spinster, but this time, in the part of _Miss
Myrtle_, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical
British boarder, Mr. _John Preston, M. P._ (interpreted with great relish
and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade,"
she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a
_serviette_"--one of the pleasantest