II

During the weeks that followed the disappearance of John Dene, a careful observer of Apthorpe Road could not have failed to observe the trouble that it was apparently giving the local authorities. A fatality seemed to brood over this unfortunate thoroughfare. First of all the telephone mains seemed to go wrong. Workmen came, and later there arrived a huge roll of lead-covered cable. Labour was scarce, and never did labourers work less industriously for their hire.

On the morning after the arrival of the men, Mr. Montagu Naylor paused at the spot where they were working, and for a minute or two stood watching them with interest.

Was there any danger of the telephone system being interrupted?

No, the cable was being laid as a precaution. The existing cable was showing faults.

Mr. Naylor pa.s.sed on his way, and from time to time would exchange greetings with the men. They were extremely civil fellows, he decided.

Mr. Naylor felt very English.

The telephone men had not completed their work when the water-main, as if jealous of the care and attention being lavished upon a rival system, developed some strange and dangerous symptoms, involving the picking up of the road.

Again Mr. Naylor showed interest, and learned that the water pressure was not all that it should be in the neighbourhood, and it was thought that some foreign substance had got into the pipes. Just as the watermen were preparing to pack up and take a leisurely departure, two men, their overalls smeared and spotted with red-lead, arrived at the end of the street with a hand-barrow.

In due course a cutting of some fifteen or twenty feet was made in the roadway, and the reek of stale gas a.s.sailed the nostrils of the pa.s.ser-by.

Obviously some shadow of misfortune brooded over Apthorpe Road, for no sooner were these men beginning to pack up their tools, than the road-men arrived, with a full-blooded steam-roller, bent upon ploughing up and crushing down Apthorpe Road to a new and proper symmetry. In short the thoroughfare in which Mr. Montagu Naylor lived seemed never to be without workmen by day, and by night watchmen to protect munic.i.p.al property from depredation.

"I'm not so sure," remarked Malcolm Sage to Thompson who had entered his room soon after Colonel Walton had gone to pay his call at 110, Downing Street, "that the menage Naylor isn't a subject for investigation by the Food Controller."

Thompson grinned.

"Eighty pounds of potatoes seems to be a generous week's supply for three people."

"And other things to match, sir," said Thompson with another grin.

"Haricot beans, cabbage, they're nuts on cabbage, salad and all sorts of things that are not rationed. I think it must be diabetes," he added with another grin.

"Possibly, Thompson, possibly," said Malcolm Sage; "but in the meantime we will a.s.sume other explanations. Some people eat more than others.

For instance, the German is a very big eater."

"And a dirty one, too, sir," added Thompson with disgust. "I've been at hotels with 'em."

"Seven meals a day is one of the articles of faith of the good German, Thompson," continued Malcolm Sage.

"And what's the result, sir?" remarked Thompson.

"I suppose," remarked Sage meditatively, "it's the same as with a bean-fed horse. They go out looking for trouble."

"And they're going to get it," was the grim rejoinder.

"Well, carry on, Thompson," said Sage by way of dismissal. "You'll learn a great deal about the green-grocery trade in the process."

"And waterworks--and gas and things, sir," grinned Thompson.

As Thompson opened the door of Malcolm Sage's room, he stepped aside to allow Colonel Walton to enter, and then quietly closed the door behind him.

"Bad time?" enquired Sage as Colonel Walton dropped into a chair and, taking off his cap, mopped his forehead.

"On this occasion I resigned for both of us."

For once in his life Malcolm Sage was surprised. He looked incredulously across at his chief, who gazed back with a comical expression in his eyes.

"I thought I was left at home for fear I might resign," said Malcolm Sage drily when Colonel Walton had finished telling him of the interview.

But Colonel Walton did not look up from the end of his cigar, which he was examining with great intentness.

"I'm not a sceptic," remarked Malcolm Sage presently, as he gazed at his brilliantly-polished fingernails, "but I would give a great deal for a dumb patriot domiciled in Apthorpe Road."

"Dumb?" queried Colonel Walton.

Malcolm Sage nodded without raising his eyes from his finger-nails.

"I have no doubt that Apthorpe Road is exclusively patriotic; but if we were to ask one of its residents to lend us a front-bedroom and, furthermore, if we spent all our days in the bedroom at the window----"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There's always the domestic servant," suggested Colonel Walton.

"Not much use in this case, chief," was the reply. "It means that Thompson has had to turn road-mender. Good man, Thompson," he added.

"He'd extract facts from a futurist picture."

Colonel Walton nodded.

CHAPTER XVI

FINLAY'S S.O.S.

I

"Well, I think it's spies," announced Marjorie Rogers, as she sat perched on the corner of John Dene's table, swinging a pretty foot.

Dorothy looked up quickly. "But----" she began, then paused.

"And it's all Mr. Llewellyn John's fault. He ought to intern all aliens. On raid-nights the Tube is simply disgusting."

Dorothy smiled at the wise air of decision with which Marjorie settled political problems. The strain of the past week with its hopes and fears was beginning to tell upon her. There had been interminable interrogations by men in plain clothes, who with large hands and blunt pencils wrote copious notes in fat note-books. The atmosphere with which they surrounded themselves was so vague, so non-committal, that Dorothy began to feel that she was suspected of having stolen John Dene.

"Oh, mother!" she had cried on the evening of the first day of her ordeal at the hands of Scotland Yard, "you should see your poor, defenceless daughter surrounded by men who do nothing but ask questions and look mysterious. They're so different from Mr. Sage," she had added as an afterthought.

"If it isn't the spies," continued Marjorie, "then what is it?"

Dorothy shook her head wearily. She missed John Dene. It was just beginning to dawn upon her how much she missed him. The days seemed interminable. There was nothing to do but answer the door to the repeated knocks, either of detectives or of journalists. It was a relief when Marjorie ran in to pick her up for lunch--Dorothy had felt it only fair to discontinue the elaborate lunches that were sent in--or on her way home in the evening.