ROBERT ELDRIDGE sat back in his seat. The train would be moving presently. He looked at his watch.... Twelve minutes past seven. He had perhaps entered the train too soon. His compartment might at the last moment be invaded. Then, of course, he would have to move into another.He hoped it had not been noticed— this anxiety of his to avoid his fellow-men whenever he caught the 7:15 from Fenchurch Street. But that was hardly likely. There was nothing to excite suspicion or even comment in his wish to travel alone. Most Englishmen preferred, if possible, to do so. There was no call for anyone to guess that he had a special reason of his own.So far the scheme had worked well. It had been in operation now for six months, and never a hitch... so far. He must have brought it off something between twenty and thirty times. It was still, however, difficult to feel at ease. One of these days...Why had they not thought of something less elaborate, simpler and more normal altogether? Eldridge sighed. He was, he reflected, like that. If there were two possible courses, one straightforward and the other devious, he was bound to find himself sooner or later committed to the more romantic.

CONSTANCE Sedgwick, M.D., aged twenty-six, was staring at herself critically in the long mirror. As a young doctor of medicine, with a degree for which she had worked hard and long, she prided herself on being objective. She was looking at herself, so she said, as she had been taught to look at a bacteriological culture under the lens, very steadily and without prejudice.“How you strike a contemporary — that’s what I want to know,” she said, addressing the figure in the glass. “If I saw you in the street, should I turn to look at you again? You appear to be intelligent, and there is clearly no nonsense about you — or not more than is necessary. If I were a woman I think I should dislike you — yes, you are sufficiently attractive for that. If I were a man —”But here she paused. She had, she assured herself, no very great interest in what she would think of herself if she were a man.

IT ALL STARTED with the loss of my luggage.I was returning home to England from a trip to the Tuscan towns by way of the Riviera, and I had registered my trunk to Genoa. On arriving at that city, however, I discovered, after much difficult enquiry, in the course of which I was assured that Italy, thanks to Signer Mussolini, was a great and glorious country which would shortly be undisputed mistress of the Mediterranean and the most efficient nation in Europe, that my effects had been despatched to Geneva. It was pointed out, for my consolation, that the difference between "Geneva" and "Ginevra" was almost negligible.Fortunately I was in no great need of consolation. I was, in fact, delighted with the discovery of my loss. It was an omen. All roads, it seemed, were leading me to Beatrice.Beatrice Harvel, whom I had met in London during the War, was now on the staff of the League of Nations. She had been for two years in Geneva and I had not seen her during all that time. I had parted with her in the conviction that a penniless officer newly demobilised, as I then was, not yet broken to the paths of commerce, was in no position to lay his name and absence of fortune at her feet. During the last few days, however, my position and prospects had changed remarkably for the better. My Uncle James, calling me into his office some three weeks previously, had announced his immediate intention of making me a partner in his business, and had given me to understand that I might regard myself as his heir.

I EMPTIED my stein, called for another and looked once more into the Platzl, The morning was warm and fine ; the season was late September, the 27th to be exact; and the air gave promise that St. Martin would not be cheated of his summer. Dust, chased in spirals by a light breeze, was dancing down the street and Munich was pleasant to look upon.I was sitting in one of the arched windows of the Hofbrauhaus, in whose dark halls men had grasped beer-pots, and drunk and swore, and quarrelled and sung Lieder for four hundred years.I had been at my table for some twenty minutes lookig through the local papers. Several farther bankruptcies were recorded ; the number of young men in the big cities who had never had any work to do and were unlikely ever to find their way to an office or factory, was steadily increasing― European statesmanship appeared to be as bankrupt as the private financiers who were shooting themselves daily. Finally, there had been another of the appalling accidents which had recently become so alarmingly frequent in the German public services, and it was openly suggested in more than one of the sheets at which I had looked that they must be the work of an organised gang of wreckers. For no apparent reason a big passenger plane flying from Munich to Berlin had crashed shortly after taking off from the aerodrome, and six passengers and the two pilots had been killed outright,

John Leslie Palmer (1885-1944) and Hilary St George Saunders (1898-1951)ROBERT ELDRIDGE sat back in his seat. The train would be moving presently. He looked at his watch.... Twelve minutes past seven. He had perhaps entered the train too soon. His compartment might at the last moment be invaded. Then, of course, he would have to move into another.He hoped it had not been noticed— this anxiety of his to avoid his fellow-men whenever he caught the 7:15 from Fenchurch Street. But that was hardly likely. There was nothing to excite suspicion or even comment in his wish to travel alone. Most Englishmen preferred, if possible, to do so. There was no call for anyone to guess that he had a special reason of his own.