CLUBFOOT THE AVENGER BEING SOME FURTHER ADVENTURES OF DESMOND OKEWOOD, OF THE SECRET SERVICE _by_ VALENTINE WILLIAMS _Secret Service Series_ [Illustration: Publisher logo] New York P. F. Collier & Son Company PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1923 AND 1924, BY VALENTINE WILLIAMS All RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. IN AFFECTIONATE MEMORY OF “G” CONTENTS Introduction ix I. The Purple Cabriolet 1 II. Enter Miss Vere Slade 13 III. The Man with the Clubfoot 34 IV. The Strange Experience of Miss Patricia Maxwell 46 V. The Ikon of Smolensk 61 VI. The Secret of the Ikon 75 VII. The Unseen Menace 91 VIII. The Top Flat 101 IX. The Footstep in the Dark 124 X. In which Desmond Okewood finds Clubfoot in Strange Company 140 XI. The Constantinople Courier 154 XII. Xenia 166 XIII. In which Check proves to be Checkmate 179 XIV. The Girl at the Hexagon 188 XV. The Decoy 201 XVI. The House in Pimlico 214 XVII. The Meeting 236 XVIII. The Chamois Leather Packet 253 XIX. A Flight and What came of It 268 XX. In which Miss Mary Brewster speaks her Mind 279 INTRODUCTION At the risk of straining an old and valued friendship, I have persuaded Major Desmond Okewood and his brother to allow me to set down in narrative form some account of a remarkable series of events that, for reasons sufficiently obvious, have never been fully described. It is now some eighteen months since Dr. Adolf Grundt, the notorious German Secret Service agent, better known to the British Intelligence Corps as “The Man with the Club Foot,” was last heard of; and there appears to remain no valid grounds why the extraordinary happenings which marked his reappearance in England should not now be related, especially as they were sedulously withheld from the newspapers at the time.