"They not only exist," Brinnen continued, "but they are becoming a very important factor in the progress of the war. Look at this room. Did you ever see a more cosmopolitan gathering! There are Belgians, Russians, Americans. The two young men who have just come in are Roumanians, over here no one knows why. This, however, I could tell you. If England takes no heed of their presence, Germany does. They will be watched by Germany until they leave, and, for all your army of censors, Germany will know, day by day, just what they do. And, even nearer to us, I could give your Secret Service a very useful piece of advice concerning the young man at the third table from here, with the lady in white spangles." Aaron Rodd and the poet both glanced cautiously in the direction indicated. A tall, clean-shaven young man, dark, with big black eyes, a mass of sleekly-brushed black hair and rather puffy cheeks, good-looking in a stagy sort of way, was entertaining an artistically decorated young ornament of the musical comedy stage. "You know him, perhaps?" Brinnen enquired. Both men shook their heads. "He is always about here," Cresswell remarked, "generally in the bar." "He is an American actor," Brinnen continued. "His name on the programmes is Jack Lovejoy. His real name is Karl Festonheim, and he was born in Cologne. His father and his grandfather, his mother and his grandmother, were Germans. He married a German wife--a negligible affair, perhaps, as the matrimonial arrangements of those sort of people are inclined to be, but still it shows his tendencies. The man, like many thousands of others, calls himself an American because he went there as a boy and has lived there ever since. Yet every relative he has lives in Germany, every spark of real feeling such a person may happen to possess, is German, he eats like a German, he lives like a German, he even talks like one. Yet that young man has no difficulty about passports. He can live in London, listen to the secret voices of your nation, and make his way unhindered and unharmed over to Germany whenever he chooses." "There are, of course, many technical difficulties," Aaron Rodd pointed out, "in dealing with naturalised Americans, whatever the country of their birth." "You are very punctilious over here," Captain Brinnen observed, with fine sarcasm. "However, I give that young man as an instance because I know that certain information concerning the whereabouts of three of your cruisers, earlier in the war, was conveyed by him to the German Admiralty. I cannot prove this, but I know it. I also know that while, if you speak to him, he will tell you that he is out of a job, that the war has played the deuce with musical comedy, he has refused three parts within the last month, on some pretext or another, because he is better occupied." Stephen Cresswell sat up in his place. An expectant light shone in his eyes. "An adventure!" he murmured.