The facetious parent who, while replete with beer, had bestowed upon Mr. John the prænomen of Prester must have been gifted with second sight. The celebrated infringer of the laws of property resembled nothing so much as an elderly parson. He was lank and lofty, sallow-complexioned and blue of chin. He affected clothes of clerical hue, wore a high Gladstonian collar and a black bow tie, and generally gave the impression of sanctimoniousness incarnate. "Good morning, brethren," he said politely. "I heard that my Lords had need of men, and I came." It was his invariable greeting when summoned before the police to account for his lapses, and he accompanied it with an equally automatic gesture, holding his elbows in to his sides, bringing his forearms horizontal, and spreading out his flat palms in the same plane, a mannerism which the irreverent Inspector Teal described as "John's lo-and-behold mitt-flap." "Acoustics excellent!" commented Storm. "I hear you visited Mr. Raegenssen last night." "On business," nodded Prester John. "And was he pleased to see you?" asked Teal. "He was--er--unfortunately unable to attend." Storm passed his cigarette case to the pious one and, when John declined, lighted a cigarette himself. "How much was Mattock paying you?" he asked, waving his match in the air to extinguish it. "Mattock?" "Raegenssen's clerk. He put you on to the job, didn't he?" "Not that I know of--although, of course, since the name is unfamiliar to me, he may have been the man. May I sit down? It assists the train of thought." Permission being granted, the man seated himself with a sigh and hitched up his trousers fastidiously. Leaning back, he fixed his eyes on the ceiling and pressed the tips of his fingers together like a pedantic schoolmaster, and after a dramatic pause he deigned to continue. "The circumstances are--to say the least of it--curious," he said. "To commence, then: I am, as you probably know by now, a member of the society called the Alpha Triangle. You have heard of it, of course?" "No," said Teal, _sotto voce_.