Colonel the Honourable George Fleetwood-Stanistreet near the end of his
dinner, and so in a mood approachable and receptive.

But there could be no harm in reconnaissance by daylight.

He whiled away the latter part of the afternoon in taxicabs, by dint of
frequent changes contriving in the most casual fashion imaginable to pass
the Seventy-ninth Street branch of the Wilhelmstrasse no less than four
times.

Little rewarded these tactics other than a fairly accurate mental
photograph of the building and its situation--and a growing suspicion that
the United States Government had profited nothing by England's lessons
of early war days in respect of the one way to cope with resident enemy
aliens.

The house stood upon a corner, occupying half of an avenue block--the
northern half of which was the site of a towering apartment house in
course of construction--and loomed over its lesser neighbours a monumental
monstrosity of architecture, as formidable as a fortress, its lower tiers
of windows barred with iron, substantial iron grilles ready to bar its
main entrance, even heavier gates guarding the carriage court in the
side street. In all a stronghold not easy for the most accomplished
house-breaker to force; yet the heart of it was Lanyard's goal; for there,
he believed, Ekstrom (under whatever _nom de guerre_) lay hidden, or if not
Ekstrom, at least a clear lead to his whereabouts.

Certainly that one could not be far from the powerful wireless station
secretly maintained on the roof of this weird jumble of architectural
periods, its aerials cunningly hidden in the crowning atrocity of its