"Well, I made up my mind to get to the bottom of it. Casement, who is nominally the head of our department, gave me an absolutely free hand, and I set to work in my own way quite independently of the police. It was six months before I got hold of a clue. Then some designs--some valuable battleship designs--disappeared from Devonport Dockyard. It was a queer case, but there were one or two things about it which made me pretty sure it was the work of the same gang, and that for the time, at all events, they were somewhere in the neighbourhood. "I needn't bother you now with all the details of how I actually ran them to earth. It wasn't an easy job. They weren't the sort of people who left any spare bits of evidence lying around, and by the time I found out where they were living it was just too late." He turned to me. "Otherwise, Mr. Lyndon, I think we might possibly have had the pleasure of meeting earlier." A sudden forgotten recollection of my first interview with McMurtrie flashed vividly into my mind. "By Jove!" I exclaimed. "What a fool I am! I knew I'd heard your name somewhere before." Latimer nodded. "Yes," he said. "I daresay I had begun to arouse a certain amount of interest in the household by the time you arrived." He paused. "By the way, I am still quite in the dark as to how you actually got in with them. Had they managed to send you a message into the prison?" "No," I said. "I'm equally in the dark as to how you've found out who I am, but you seem to know so much already, you may as well have the truth. It was chance; just pure chance and a bicycle. I hadn't the remotest notion who lived in the house. I was trying to steal some food." Latimer nodded again. "It was a chance that a man like McMurtrie wasn't likely to waste. I don't know yet how you're paying him for his help, but I should imagine it's a fairly stiff price. However, we'll come back to that afterwards. "I was just too late, as I told you, to interrupt your pleasant little house-party. I managed to find out, however, that some of you had gone to London, and I followed at once. It was then, I think, that the doctor decided it was time to take the gloves off. "So far, although I'd been on their heels for weeks, I hadn't set eyes on any of the gang personally. All the same, I had a pretty good idea of what McMurtrie and Savaroff were like to look at, and I fancy they probably guessed as much. Anyhow, as you know, it was the third member of the brotherhood--a gentleman who, I believe, calls himself Hoffman--who was entrusted with the job of putting me out of the way." A faint mocking smile flickered for a moment round his lips.