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. To frustrate their schemes something more was needed than the wit of _Brent_ and his ally, the widow _Leigh_; something more, even, than his skill in shooting pigeons in flight with an air-rifle. The vacuum was supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full credit is given to _Brent_ for letting his bath overflow so as to flood the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of _Mrs. Sanderson_ to offer her private parlour for the use of the boarders on the very day set apart for the execution of her plans which were centred in this room. It was also gross carelessness on the part of her son, when he had _Brent_, with hands up, at his mercy, to place his own revolver on the table and to use, in exchange, the unloaded weapon which he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept without proof the verbal assurances of the widow _Leigh_ that she was one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And _Fritz_ committed an unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in the fireplace. And so their schemes all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight _déshabillé_ there was every promise that the misdemeanants would receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good behaviour for the future. Illustration: "HANDS UP!" "HANDS UP YOURSELF!" _Carl Sanderson._ .. Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY. _Christopher Brent._ .. Mr. DENNIS EADIE.