At half-past four in the afternoon six great motor-cars drew up in Whitehall and the members of the Council entered the cars and were driven off. From the end of Downing Street I saw they turned into St. James’s Park and, hiring a taxi, I followed, giving the driver instruction to keep the cars in sight as long as he could. They passed through the park, up St. James’s Street, and I thought they were going to their hotel, but instead of this they went straight along Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, where they turned into the park. Realizing that I could not follow with my taxi, I put my head out of the window and ordered my driver to go up Park Lane. At the Marble Arch I picked them up again. They passed along the Bayswater Road and in a flash their destination was revealed to me. It was in order to entertain this Council that Lord Leatham’s house had been decorated! It was here that the real conference was to be held! It was a breathless, tremendous problem which the Herr Baron had set me, but I am not a man easily baffled. There is something in our German nature which rises superior to difficulties and which enables us to meet the most tremendous problems in a calm spirit of transcendent perception. I flew back to my office as fast as the taxi could carry me, and for an hour my telephone was busy. Understand that whatever risk I ran was more than justified. For there were men in that Council whose names were household words, whose faces were familiar even to the child of the cottager; there were names to conjure with, reputations and records that would have dazzled and frightened a man of a smaller calibre than myself. By twelve o’clock that night two desperate and well-armed men were exploring the tunnel. They were men who were prepared at the call of the Fatherland to lay down their lives, yea, even on an enemy’s soil. I was not one of them. I was sorely tempted to go, but common prudence dictated that the brain of the movement should be far removed from the scene of danger. Apparently the party met with no opposition and traversed the tunnel which had collapsed in places until they reached the ruins of a flight of circular stone stairs, which led up to a sort of shaft and terminated abruptly at a circular stone flag. In preparation for such an emergency they had brought collapsible ladders and one of our friends mounted to the top. He could hear footsteps above him, and I judge that he was in the old baronial banqueting hall which is celebrated throughout England as the most perfect type of Norman architecture extant in the country. Its stone-flagged floor, its vaulted roof, its grim stone fire-place, its great mullion windows, have been so often described in guide-books that it is not necessary for me to attempt to rival our good friend Karl Baedeker.