"This terrible war," she murmured, "makes it difficult to remember anything. You will have some tea, Mr. Cresswell? Let me introduce you to Professor David." The poet bowed to his neighbour and glanced around the little circle, winding up with a nod to Lovejoy, who seemed hopelessly out of place. They were, for the most part, a very gloomy and serious little company. "I interrupted an interesting conversation, I am sure," the poet declared genially. "May it not continue?" There was a moment's rather awkward silence and Mrs. Abrahams sighed. "Alas!" she said, "I am afraid there was nothing original about our conversation this afternoon. It was the war--always the war." Cresswell balanced his plate upon his knee, sipped his tea and talked commonplace nonsense for a quarter of an hour. Then he got up to leave. "Coming my way, Lovejoy?" he enquired. The young actor hesitated for a moment and then acquiesced. Mrs. Abrahams bade them both farewell. She extended to neither of them any invitation to return. "Rather a heavy sort of crowd for you, isn't it?" Cresswell asked, as they descended in the lift. "Mrs. Abrahams was kind to me when I first came to London," Lovejoy remarked, a little vaguely. "I promised I'd look in there some day and I happened to be near this afternoon." "Just so," the poet murmured, as they paused at the corner of the street. "So long!" Jack Lovejoy stepped into a taxi and was driven away westwards. Cresswell crossed the road, turned into Whitehall, made his way into a block of public buildings, and after half an hour's delay was shown into the presence of an important-looking gentleman, who bade him take a seat and peered at him doubtfully over the top of his eyeglasses. "Sir Lionel," his visitor began, "I have come to you because I have some information which should be exceedingly valuable to the home branch of the Secret Service." "Young man," the official replied, "you are the fifteenth caller within the last few hours who has brought me information guaranteed to save the Empire." "Lucky number, the fifteenth," the poet remarked cheerfully. "Do you happen to know Mrs. Abrahams of Northumberland Court?" "I know her slightly," Sir Lionel admitted. "She is a friend of several members of the Cabinet." "Why isn't she interned?" Cresswell demanded. "She is a German." "Her husband was born in England." "But she is a red-hot German, all the same," the young man persisted. "I have been making enquiries about her myself and I find that for years before the war she was doing nothing but run down the culture and customs of this country as compared with Germany." The official shrugged his shoulders. "There is no information that I am aware of against Mrs. Abrahams," he said, "and you must remember that she is, as I told you, a friend of several members of the Cabinet. They would not be likely to listen to anything against her."