Strange and devious are the ways of the Secret Service. Old hands at the game, neither Desmond nor Francis Okewood had been astonished on being bidden, severally and secretly, to report at the office of Jacob Melchizedech, commission agent, Shaftsbury Avenue, to find the Chief installed in one of the three modest rooms which Mr. Melchizedech’s place of business comprised. Bizarre folk often have the pressing need to unbosom themselves to those who pull the strings behind the façade of public affairs. But the social record of some of these mysterious gentlemen and ladies is not always one to inspire unquestioning confidence. So, in the first instance, a non-committal identity and a non-committal address are but an elementary safeguard against blackmail and the kindred practices of the “double-cross.” Seldom did the Chief, known to few only by sight and to fewer still by name, face the casual visitor save under the cloak of an unrevealing identity and an accommodation address. Desmond picked up the letter and read it, while his brother looked over his shoulder. Dr. Grundt [the bold, upright handwriting set forth] presents his compliments to his colleague, the Director of the British Secret Service, and requests the favour of a personal interview at a time and place most convenient to the latter. A reply by return in the Agony Column of _The Times_ would oblige. “Well, I’m damned!” Desmond exploded violently. “You’re surely not going to receive the fellow, sir?” “Mr. Melchizedech on my behalf,” the Chief retorted with a twinkle in his eye, “will be pleased to hear anything our friend wishes to lay before me!” “We’ll be three to one, anyhow!” muttered Francis Okewood. The Chief shook his head. “No, we shan’t,” he announced decisively. “You two will be in the farther room . . .” “But, Chief,” Desmond broke in vehemently, “the man will be armed. He’s dangerous: he stops at nothing . . .” The big man shrugged his broad shoulders. “I always meet an adversary halfway,” he said. “And I would remind you that Grundt and I have never yet come face to face. I am inordinately interested, I must confess, in this cripple who, when he directed the ex-Kaiser’s personal secret service, exercised such power over his Imperial master that he was the most dreaded man in Germany. You and your brother have told me so much about his dominating personality. I like encountering dominating personalities!” he added reflectively. Desmond and Francis Okewood exchanged a glance full of meaning. For months the figure of the gigantic cripple had haunted their thoughts. So deeply had their long duel with The Man with the Clubfoot impressed his figure on their brain that in their mind’s eye they could see him now, a simian silhouette with his vast girth, his immensely long arms, his leering, savage eyes beneath the shaggy brows—above all, his inevitable undisguisable trade-mark, the monstrous deformed foot.