Yet never in my wildest moments had I dreamt that he would try and get into Germany in war-time, into that land where every citizen is catalogued and pigeonholed from the cradle.  But Red Tabs’ oracular utterance had made everything clear to me.  Why a mission to Germany would be the very thing that Francis would give his eyes to be allowed to attempt!  Francis with his utter disregard of danger, his love of taking risks, his impish delight in taking a rise out of the stodgy Hun—­why, if there were Englishmen brave enough to take chances of that kind, Francis would be the first to volunteer.

Yes, if Francis were on a mission anywhere it would be to Germany.  But what prospect had he of ever returning—­with the frontiers closed and ingress and egress practically barred even to pro-German neutrals?  Many a night in the trenches I had a mental vision of Francis, so debonair and so fearless, facing a firing squad of Prussian privates.

From the day of the luncheon at the Bath Club to this very afternoon I had had no further inkling of my brother’s whereabouts or fate.  The authorities at home professed ignorance, as I knew, in duty bound, they would, and I had nothing to hang any theory on to until Dicky Allerton’s letter came.  Ashcroft at the F.O. fixed up my passports for me and I lost no time in exchanging the white gulls and red cliffs of Cornwall for the windmills and trim canals of Holland.

And now in my breast pocket lay, written on a small piece of cheap foreign notepaper, the tidings I had come to Groningen to seek.  Yet so trivial, so nonsensical, so baffling was the message that I already felt my trip to Holland to have been a fruitless errand.

I found Dicky fat and bursting with health in his quarters at the internment camp.  He only knew that Francis had disappeared.  When I told him of my meeting with Red Tabs at the Bath Club, of the latter’s words to me at parting and of my own conviction in the matter he whistled, then looked grave.

He went straight to the point in his bluff direct way.

“I am going to tell you a story first, Desmond,” he said to me, “then I’ll show you a piece of paper.  Whether the two together fit in with your theory as to poor Francis’ disappearance will be for you to judge.  Until now I must confess—­I had felt inclined to dismiss the only reference this document appears to make to your brother as a mere coincidence in names, but what you have told me makes things interesting—­by Jove, it does, though.  Well, here’s the yarn first of all.

“Your brother and I have had dealings in the past with a Dutchman in the motor business at Nymwegen, name of Van Urutius.  He has often been over to see us at Coventry in the old days and Francis has stayed with him at Nymwegen once or twice on his way back from Germany—­Nymwegen, you know, is close to the German frontier.  Old Urutius has been very decent to me since I have been in gaol here and has been over several times, generally with a box or two of those nice Dutch cigars.”