"I expect he was an Englishman who had missed the passenger steamers and come over by the only way possible," suggested Mr. Bilverstone.
"No, sir," insisted Newruck, "he wasn't an Englishman, nor yet a Belgian. He wasn't even a genuine refugee. I'm rather good at remembering faces, sir, and I knew I'd seen his face before, somewhere; though it wasn't until he'd gone that I realised who he was. I'm certain, now, however, I know that he was an alien enemy, a German, and a spy. I know that he was Fritz Seligmann—Herr Hilliger's secretary."
Mr. Bilverstone looked up sharply.
"Indeed?" he cried. "You are sure?"
"Certain." Seth Newruck nodded emphatically. "I believe he has smuggled himself over here to do some spying work."
The Scoutmaster was silent for some moments. He took up his pen, but did not use it.
"Look here, Seth," he said presently. "There may be more in this than appears on the surface. That man has come over here for no good. He ought to be tracked. Unfortunately, I can't leave this work just now. But you can be spared, I think. Suppose you go up to Sunnydene. That's where he'll make for. Go up and have a look at the house. If you see anything to show that some one has entered—any smoke from the chimneys, if the gate has been left open, if there are any new footprints on the garden path—let me know at once. Mrs. Daplin-Gennery will let you use her telephone. I expect I shall be at the naval base until about midnight. If I don't hear from you before then, I shall understand that nothing has happened, or that you have made a mistake in supposing that the man was Hilliger's secretary."
Mrs. Daplin-Gennery had taken into her home a family of the Belgian refugees. They were people of good class, from Bruges; and after all the misery they had endured in their flight to Ostend, and the hardships of their crossing the North Sea in a crowded, open boat, she was unwilling to allow them to undergo the further discomfort of being, as she said, "herded" in the public hall. So she had brought them, a mother and two daughters, to Green Croft, providing them with new clothes, giving up to them two of her best bedrooms, and entertaining them with the most dainty dinner that her cook could serve.
During the meal they had told her so many thrilling and shocking stories of the German invasion and occupation of Belgium that she was worked up into a condition of extreme nervousness and began to dread more than ever the possibility of the enemy extending their march of ruthless conquest and destruction by coming over to England.
When her three guests had retired for the night, and she was left alone, her nervousness increased; she started at every little sound that broke the silence of the house, and when at length there came a violent ring at an electric bell, she clutched the arms of her chair, trembling.