About this time, there arrived at the Stazione Centrale of Milan—one cold and foggy north Italian morning—an emaciated, unshaven priest, dressed in dusty soutane and a black shovel hat; a priest whose hands were dusty and bleeding, whose eyes shone glassy with sleeplessness, whose feet—as he limped down from the crowded third-class carriage—were shod in cracked boots, soles worn to the welt, uppers caked and terraced with layer on layer of drying mud.

Humbly, but in excellent Italian, the priest enquired of a surly facchino his way to the Via Rasori; and having been told in guttural Milanese to make for the Galleria, to take the “Via Dant’,” and then the “Via Boccacc’,” limped out into the fog. Had that fog been less dense, the facchino might have noticed a hole in the priest’s shovel hat, a hole possibly made for ventilation purposes—for it had been drilled clean through the black furry felt, in at one side and out the other.

The hole was two days old; and had not happened to the hat in its passage across the south frontier of Switzerland—but considerably further north, on one of those dark and rainy nights when sentries fire first and challenge afterwards.

Our priest limped out of the station, thanking God for the fog, through the dank gardens (from instinct he avoided main streets near railway stations), past the Hotel Cavour, and Finzi’s shuttered dress-making shop, past the dark bulk of the Scala Theatre, through the huge empty Arcade, and across the Piazza del Duomo into the Via Dante....

He had no more money in his pockets, having calculated to report at Berne: but instructions as to compromising Consuls or Legations in neutral countries were particularly explicit: and in the Swiss Capital a gentleman with a turned-up moustache had evinced peculiar interest about his movements. At the Franco-Swiss frontier, other moustached gentlemen might be waiting. So the last of our priest’s notes—he experienced some difficulty in getting change for the five German “marks”—had paid for the journey from Chiasso to Milan.

It was ten years since his last visit to the city, but he managed to find the Via Boccaccio which runs past the Dal Verme Theatre, and followed it—rather painfully for he wanted to go to sleep on every bench—till he saw, hung at the corner of a high stone house, a shield, white lettered on a red ground, “His Britannic Majesty’s Consul General for Lombardy and Venetia.”

“Gott sei Dank,” said the priest—and, then remembering that it was no longer necessary to think in German, “Thank God!”

He slinked past the porter’s lodge—the consulate is on the first floor—dragged himself up the marble stairs; and rang the bell.

Mr. Towsey, brown-bearded, short of stature, determined of eye, opened the door himself. He had just made his early cup of tea; his mother was still in bed; their servant gossiping downstairs.

“Ma cosa vuole a cuest’ ora?” he said.

“Console Inglese?” asked the priest.

“Si. Ma cosa vuole?”

“Lasc’ entrare. Non posso parlarvi qui.”

The door closed behind them.

Mr. Towsey led into a square bare room, safe in one corner, desk near the window.

“Ebbene?” began the consul.

“For the Lord’s sake give me a cigarette,” said Francis Gordon.

He had no papers to prove his identity. His eyes kept closing all the time he talked. The hand which held the cigarette shook like a jelly on a plate. He would neither say whence he had come, nor why, nor how. But he knew exactly what he wanted: he wanted Mr. Towsey—he said it over and over again—to send a telegram, a telegram in Embassy cypher addressed to the British Foreign Office for transmission to I. D. War Office. Also, he wanted to go to bed until the answer arrived.

“But hang it all,” said the Consul, “I don’t know anything about you. You turn up at seven o’clock in the morning. You start by talking Italian. Then you ask for a cigarette in English. Now you want me to let you use our secret code-book, and to pay for the cable out of government funds....”

“And after that,” yawned Francis, “I want to sleep in your spare bed-room till the answer arrives.”

Mr. Towsey felt himself in an awkward position. Italy was still neutral; the diplomatic situation growing hourly more complicated. Then he looked sharply at the bedraggled weary man in the black soutane; decided to take the risk.

“Here, write your telegram,” he said, pushing paper and pencil across the desk. “I suppose you don’t want to code it yourself.”

“Oh, Lord, no.” Francis, eyes dizzy with sleep, wrote rapidly. “Please inform I.D.W.O. that No. 63 has arrived consulate Milan with important information. Stop. Can arrangements be made for him to be met at Modane by car and proceed direct to G.H.Q. France. Stop. Please request consul here to advance one thousand lire for clothes and travelling expenses. End.”

Said Mr. Towsey, reading it, “I think I’d better address this to Mr. Montgomery....”

But Francis Gordon had fallen fast asleep.

He awoke, some fifteen hours later, frightened out of his wits; remembered that the need for fear had passed; crawled off a sofa; fumbled about for the electric switch; clicked on the light.

The noise of his getting-up disturbed his host from the deciphering of a cable which read, “Please advance to person for whom you sent cable No. 3426 any monies he requires. Stop. Order him proceed Modane soonest possible and report to French authorities who will have full instructions. Montgomery.”

“I’m most awfully obliged to you, Mr. Towsey,” said Francis Gordon next morning: a clean-shaven Francis Gordon dressed in a green ready-made Italian suit, bright yellow boots on his feet, bright yellow bag in his hand. “Just as a last favour, would you mind having these posted for me.”

He handed over three letters, one—which began “My dear Beatrice, I have to apologize for leaving you so long without news”—addressed care of the Guaranty Trust Company, New York; the second to “P. Jameson, Esq.,” and the third to “H. T. Prout, 10 Mecklinburgh Square, London W.”

Then, having shaken hands with his host, he lit a cigarette, and strolled creakily downstairs to the waiting taxi....