“I begin to understand,” Dominey said thoughtfully.

“You shall understand everything when the time comes for you to take a hand,” Seaman promised, “and do not in your zeal forget, my friend, that your utility to our great cause will depend largely upon your being able to establish and maintain your position as an English gentleman.  So far all has gone well?”

“Perfectly, so far as I am concerned,” Dominey replied.  “You must remember, though, that there is your end to keep up.  Berlin will be receiving frantic messages from East Africa as to my disappearance.  Not even my immediate associates were in the secret.”

“That is all understood,” Seaman assured his companion.  “A little doctor named Schmidt has spent many marks of the Government money in frantic cables.  You must have endeared yourself to him.”

“He was a very faithful associate.”

“He has been a very troublesome friend.  It seems that the natives got their stories rather mixed up concerning your namesake, who apparently died in the bush, and Schmidt continually emphasised your promise to let him hear from Cape Town.  However, all this has been dealt with satisfactorily.  The only real dangers are over here, and so far you seem to have encountered the principal ones.”

“I have at any rate been accepted,” Dominey declared, “by my nearest living relative, and incidentally I have discovered the one far-seeing person in England who knows what is in store for us.”

Seaman was momentarily anxious.

“Whom do you mean?”

“The Duke of Worcester, my cousin’s husband, of whom you were speaking just now.”

The little man’s face relaxed.

“He reminds me of the geese who saved the Capitol,” he said, “a brainless man obsessed with one idea.  It is queer how often these fanatics discover the truth.  That reminds me,” he added, taking a small memorandum book from his waistcoat pocket and glancing it through.  “His Grace has a meeting to-night at the Holborn Town Hall.  I shall make one of my usual interruptions.”

“If he has so small a following, why don’t you leave him alone?” Dominey enquired.

“There are others associated with him,” was the placid reply, “who are not so insignificant.  Besides, when I interrupt I advertise my own little hobby.”

“These—­we English are strange people,” Dominey remarked, glancing around the room after a brief but thoughtful pause.  “We advertise and boast about our colossal wealth, and yet we are incapable of the slightest self-sacrifice in order to preserve it.  One would have imagined that our philosophers, our historians, would warn us in irresistible terms, by unanswerable scientific deduction, of what was coming.”

“My compliments to your pronouns,” Seaman murmured, with a little bow.  “Apropos of what you were saying, you will never make an Englishman—­I beg your pardon, one of your countrymen—­realise anything unpleasant.  He prefers to keep his head comfortably down in the sand.  But to leave generalities, when do you think of going to Norfolk?”