information, destined for France, was to be diverted to their pockets. And it

was to be used, remember—used a week or two later, with great guns and swift

torpedoes, suddenly in the darkness of a summer night.

 

This was the story I had been deciphering in a back room of a country inn,

overlooking a cabbage garden. This was the story that hummed in my brain as I

swung in the big touring-car from glen to glen.

 

My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime Minister, but a little

reflection convinced me that that would be useless. Who would believe my tale? I

must show a sign, some token in proof, and Heaven knew what that could be. Above

all, I must keep going myself, ready to act when things got riper, and that was

going to be no light job with the police of the British Isles in full cry after

me and the watchers of the Black Stone running silently and swiftly on my trail.

 

I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered east by the sun, for I

remembered from the map that if I went north I would come into a region of

coalpits and industrial towns. Presently I was down from the moorlands and

traversing the broad haugh of a river. For miles I ran alongside a park wall,

and in a break of the trees I saw a great castle. I swung through little old

thatched villages, and over peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blazing

with hawthorn and yellow laburnum. The land was so deep in peace that I could

scarcely believe that somewhere behind me were those who sought my life; ay, and

that in a month’s time, unless I had the almightiest of luck, these round

country faces would be pinched and staring, and men would be lying dead in