"'Spose you haven't come across Captain Fennelburt?"
The spy, controlling himself with an effort, turned his head and laughed.
"Hope you don't think I'm the fellow?" he inquired. "If, so, you won't get that hundred pounds, old son. I heard this morning that he had been collared at Perth."
"Is that so?" asked the other, a subaltern. "What was all the racket about?"
"Misappropriation of mess funds, I believe," replied von Preussen. He now felt more at ease and master of the situation. He forced the conversation on trivial topics until his undesirable acquaintances reached their destination.
The spy remained until the car stopped at the terminus; then he started to walk briskly inland, reproving himself for his bad manoeuvre in taking a car bound for a coast town.
A four hours' stiff walk brought him to a desolate moor, standing well on eight hundred feet above the sea. Sheltering from possible observation behind an overhanging rock, he made the necessary change from Captain Broadstone, R.A.F., to plain Thomas Smith, commercial traveller, representing Collar & Grab, wholesale provision merchants (and incidentally profiteers), of Liverpool.
For the next four days he remained at Galashiels, lying low and explaining his presence by the plausible statement that the samples his firm had dispatched had gone astray. On the fifth he decided to go to York, where he knew of a Polish Jew, Polinski by name, who was in reality a German Secret Service agent.
At Newcastle he caught a fast train bound for London. He now travelled third class, finding himself in the company of four bluejackets proceeding "on leaf."
Within a few minutes of the train leaving the station the commercial traveller was apparently fast asleep. He was keenly on the alert to gather information, and his wishes were realised.