“Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform,” he cried, “can have mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway.”
The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the “double.” An officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
“I'll have to commandeer this,” he said. “Run back to Cromer. Don't crush my men, but go like the devil!”
“We heard firing here,” explained the officer at the Coast Guard station. “The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen. They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,” exclaimed the officer suddenly, “if you are the three gentlemen who first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names.”
Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had been held up by the Germans.
“You were lucky to escape,” said the officer “And in keeping on to give warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved extremely well.”
Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence. With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
“Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!” exclaimed Ford admiringly.
“MY regiment!” snorted the officer. “You've passed through five regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places. They're everywhere!” he cried jubilantly.
“And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,” exclaimed Ford.