Faces We have no Use For.
"Once or twice he sighed a little, although he had an uninterrupted view of a profile as regular as a canoe."—New Magazine.
AT THE PLAY.
"The Man Who Stayed at Home."
No, he was not a shirker, as you thought. Nor was he engaged in making munitions of war, or khaki, or woollens, or military boots, or in exporting cocoa to the enemy viâ neutral Holland—that roaring monopoly of the Pacificist. His business was to spy at spies—a task that called for as much coolness and courage as any job at the Front. And so when the officious flapper presented him with a white feather he had no use for it except as a pipe-cleaner.
For his purpose Christopher Brent had taken up his residence at a "select boarding establishment" on the East Coast, which contained the following members of the German Secret Service: Mrs. Sanderson, proprietress; Carl, her son, clerk in the British Admiralty; Fräulein Schroeder, boarder, and Fritz, waiter. Their design, if I rightly penetrated its darkness, was to give information of the whereabouts of a certain section of the Expeditionary Force which was "coming through from the North"; to supply Berlin with plans of the coast defences; and finally to give a signal to a German submarine by the firing of the house, which would incidentally mean the roasting alive of its innocent contents. All this (for the sake of Aristotle and the Unities) was to take place in a single day, though I for one could not believe that either the pigeon post or the ordinary mail would be equal to the strain.
Their utensils included a Marconi instrument concealed in the chimney; a bomb; a revolver; maps of the minefield and harbour; a carrier-pigeon, and a knife for disposing of the cliff-sentry.
