Mr. Hebblethwaite’s eyebrows became slowly upraised.  The twinkle in his eyes remained, however.

“My!” he exclaimed softly.  “We’re getting on with the romance all right!”

“During the momentary absence of this fellow and his agent from the carriage,” Norgate proceeded, “I possessed myself of a slip of paper which had become detached from the packet of documents they had been examining.  It consisted of a list of names mostly of people resident in the United Kingdom, purporting to be Selingman’s agents.  I venture to believe that this list is a precise record of the principal German spies in this country.”

“German spies!” Mr. Hebblethwaite murmured.  “Whew!”

He sipped his champagne.

“That list,” Norgate went on, “is in my pocket.  I may add that although I was careful to keep up the fiction of not understanding German, and although I informed Herr Selingman that I had seen the paper in question blow out of the window, he nevertheless gave me that night a drugged whisky and soda, and during the time I slept he must have been through every one of my possessions.  I found my few letters and papers turned upside down, and even my pockets had been ransacked.”

“Where was the paper, then?” Mr. Hebblethwaite enquired.

“In an inner pocket of my pyjamas,” Norgate explained.  “I had them made with a sort of belt inside, at the time I was a king’s messenger.”

Mr. Hebblethwaite played with his tie for a moment and drank a little more champagne.

“Could I have a look at the list?” he asked, as though with a sudden inspiration.

Norgate passed it across the table to him.  Mr. Hebblethwaite adjusted his pince-nez, gave a little start as he read the first name, leaned back in his chair as he came to another, stared at Norgate about half-way down the list, as though to make sure that he was in earnest, and finally finished it in silence.  He folded it up and handed it back.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed, a little pointlessly.  “Now tell me, Norgate, you showed this list down there?”—­jerking his head towards the street.

“I did,” Norgate admitted.

“And what did they say?”

“Just what you might expect men whose lives are spent within the four walls of a room in Downing Street to say,” Norgate replied.  “You are half inclined to make fun of me yourself, Hebblethwaite, but at any rate I know you have a different outlook from theirs.  Old Carew was frantically polite.  He even declared the list to be most interesting!  He rambled on for about a quarter of an hour on the general subject of the spy mania.  German espionage, he told me, was one of the shadowy evils from which England had suffered for generations.  So far as regards London and the provincial towns, he went on, whether for good or evil, we have a large German population, and if they choose to make reports to any one in Germany as to events happening here which come under their