"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man from Balliol?""And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert."What price that? When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen guns.That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men.The country hasn't stopped laughing yet.You give us a rag!" challenged Herbert." Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail, and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here in town and all of them undergraduates.""Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time.
"That's just what I say.You boys to-day are so dull.You lack initiative.It's the idea that counts.Anybody can do the acting.That's just amateur theatricals!""Is it!" snorted Herbert."If you want to know what stage fright is, just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador.You'll find it's a little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!"Ford had no part in the debate.He had been smoking comfortably and with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant.But now he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly about him, leaned eagerly forward.They were at the corner table of the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had departed to the theatres and they were quite alone.Below them, outside the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still sitting.
"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford."One that is risky, that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
" Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently."HE never reads anything! Go on!""It's the book most talked about," explained Ford."And what else is most talked about?" He answered his own question.
"The landing of the Germans in Morocco and the chance of war.
Now, I ask you, with that book in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?""What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally."The Boy Scouts would fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!""Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently.He shook Ford by the arm."How?" he demanded breathlessly."How are we to do it? It would take hundreds of men.""Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car.
I thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German uniforms.I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out how prepared you people are to meet invasion.And when you said just now that you wanted a chance to go to jail --""What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
"We?" demanded Herbert."Are you in this?""Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly."It's my own private invasion! I'm letting you boys in on the ground floor.If Idon't go, there won t be any invasion!"
The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then nodded.
"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely."What's your plan?"In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then slapped the table with his open palm.His voice shook with righteous indignation.
"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded."Do you suppose for one minute I will allow--"His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully."Come on, Ford," he said."We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us."Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times.Each time this misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants of the car sauntered to the beach.There they chucked pebbles at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps.Each time the route by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set forth.Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of the cliff;sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the lanes of the villages.But when they again reached the car the procedure of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links.They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner.
