But Dennis made no reply, for his eyes were resting on the white-aproned waitress, who was busy with her pay-book, and he saw two things.
One was that it was no bill she was making out; the other, that the red hair under her coquettish little cap matched oddly with the great black eyes that were bent on her writing.
"Pardon me," he said, striding behind the Major's chair; and as his hand stretched forward for the pay-book the waitress looked up, and he knew that it was Ottilie Von Dussel!
"You here!" he exclaimed, and the perforated leaf on which she had been writing came away in his fingers as she closed the book.
She gave a little cry, and one of the musicians stepped down from the platform and came up to them.
"You must not make a disturbance here, sir," he said rudely, and the next moment he was flung back across an adjoining table with a cut lip.
Dennis swung round as people sprang to their feet, but Ottilie Von Dussel was making her way swiftly towards a neighbouring door.
"Stop that woman!" he shouted. "She is a German spy!" But everybody was talking at once, and the white cap vanished out of sight.
"I shall report you, sir," thundered Dennis to the loquacious Major, flourishing the leaf he had secured. "Every word of your conversation has been written down. There was a carbon in that book, and that she-fiend has escaped with the duplicate. Within forty-eight hours the German headquarters will receive information that may cost us a thousand lives!"