At this perilous stage a false move might mean the loss of everything. The one hope was to preserve a seeming of normality and at the same time convey a message as to the real significance of the situation. And like a flash came into his head a memory of boyhood scrapes and a mother who had never failed him in the hour of need. He whipped out his white handkerchief and with a single hand, an old conjuring trick, threw a knot in the centre and dangled it before Mrs. Barraclough's eyes. No message by wire or wireless ever reached its destination in quicker time than that old S. O. S. of school boy fame. He saw her tap out the "received" signal with a forefinger on the front of her cloak, then turned with a wave of the handkerchief to introduce the visitors. "Mother dear, these are two friends of mine, Sergeant Hammersmith and Mr. Cappell." They were the first names to come into his head. He added--"This is my mother, gentlemen, and I am sure you will be grieved to hear she has lately suffered from very indifferent health." To give herself a moment for reflection, Mrs. Barraclough removed her veiled motor bonnet and put it on the couch. Then she turned and descended upon Dirk with outstretched hands and a high pitched falsetto that fairly rang with welcome. "Oh, my dear Sergeant Hammer, this is indeed a pleasure. How very kind of you to drop in. So few people drop in now-a-days; dropping in seems to have quite dropped out and I do so dearly love seeing anyone from Town. Of course we are so old world and out of the way down here that we never see anyone--no one at all--nobody and to hear news direct from----" She broke off abruptly, fixed her glasses and fell back in an attitude of amazed rapture--"Anthony, dear, do look. Isn't Sergeant Picklesnip exactly like the vicar--the old one, not the present incumbent, he's too high for me. I do hope----" She descended upon Harrison Smith and wrung him warmly by both hands--"I do hope you agree with me that the Roman influence is most dangerous." And before he had time to reply--"Ah, but I wish you had known Anthony when he was a little boy and wore sailor suits--white on Sundays with a cord and a whistle round his neck. My poor husband could not endure the whistle, so he took the pea out of it and then it only made an airy noise instead of a blast." "Mother dear," Anthony interposed, "aren't you going down to the village?" A suggestion to which Harrison Smith proved a ready seconder. "Don't let us detain you, Madam," he beseeched. "No, I won't, I won't. Besides, I mustn't be late. As Mr. Gladstone said in '84--and oh, what a hot summer that was--he said--'Detention is the mother of time.'" At which Freddie Dirk, who knew something of both detention and time, shivered uncomfortably and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.