“Gerald Fentolin.”

Mr. Dunster stood quite still for a moment.  He was possessed of a wonderful memory, and he was conscious at that moment of a subtle appeal to it.  Fentolin!  There was something in the name which seemed to him somehow associated with the things against which he was on guard.  He stood with puzzled frown, reminiscent for several minutes, unsuccessful.  Then he suddenly smiled, and moving underneath the gas lamp, shook open an evening paper which he had been carrying.  He turned over the pages until he arrived at the sporting items.  Here, in almost the first paragraph, he saw the name which had happened to catch his eye a moment or two before: 

Golf at the Hague

Among the entrants for the tournament which commences to-morrow, are several well-known English players, including Mr. Barwin, Mr. Parrott, Mr. Hillard and Mr. Gerald Fentolin.

Mr. Dunster folded up the newspaper and replaced it in his pocket.  He turned towards the young man.

“So you’re a golfer, are you?”

“I play a bit,” was the somewhat indifferent reply.

Mr. Dunster turned to another part of the paper and pointed to the great black head-lines.

“Seems a queer thing for a young fellow like you to be worrying about games,” he remarked.  “I haven’t been in this country more than a few hours, but I expected to find all the young men getting ready.”

“Getting ready for what?”

“Why, to fight, of course,” Mr. Dunster replied.  “Seems pretty clear that there’s an expeditionary force being fitted out, according to this evening’s paper, somewhere up in the North Sea.  The only Englishman I’ve spoken to on this side was willing to lay me odds that war would be declared within a week.”

The young man’s lack of interest was curious.

“I am not in the army,” he said.  “It really doesn’t affect me.”

Mr. Dunster stared at him.

“You’ll forgive my curiosity,” he said, “but say, is there nothing you could get into and fight if this thing came along?”

“Nothing at all, that I know of,” the youth replied coolly.  “War is an affair which concerns only the military and naval part of two countries.  The civil population—­”

“Plays golf, I suppose,” Mr. Dunster interrupted.  “Young man, I haven’t been in England for some years, and you rather take my breath away.  All the same, you can come along with me as far as Harwich.”

The young man showed signs of some satisfaction.  “I am very much obliged to you, sir,” he declared.  “I promise you I won’t be in the way.”

The station-master, who had been looking through a little pile of telegrams brought to him by a clerk from his office, now turned towards them.  His expression was a little grave.

“Your special will be backing down directly, sir,” he announced, “but I am sorry to say that we hear very bad accounts of the line.  They say that this is only the fag-end of the storm that we are getting here, and that it’s been raging for nearly twenty-four hours on the east coast.  I doubt whether the Harwich boat will be able to put off.”