Christine lit another cigarette, and sat for a moment staring into the fire, as if trying to arrange her thoughts. At last she turned towards me. "Do you know that your uncle once went under the name of Stephen Gardiner?" she asked. "No," I said, "I didn't know, but I can quite believe it. I should think he was the sort of gentleman who had probably had half a dozen names." I paused. "Where did you come across him first?" I asked. "At Rio, two years before the war," she answered. "What, Rio in Brazil?" I asked She nodded. "We were living there then. My uncle had a big ranch about twenty miles outside the town, and of course he knew nearly everybody. At that time the whole of Brazil was in a frightful state of dissatisfaction. There was a great deal of feeling against the President, Gomez, who had been in for years and years, and Uncle Philip was one of the leading people who were trying to turn him out. It was through this that he and your uncle became friends." "But what on earth had my uncle got to do with it?" I demanded. "He was an Englishman and a stranger, and I should think he must have had a pretty rotten reputation even then." "I can't tell you that," she said. "I was only sixteen, and naturally they didn't talk about things in front of me. I suppose that somehow or other he had managed to make himself useful to them; anyhow, I know they all trusted him absolutely." "They seem to have been a nice confiding lot," I observed. "I wouldn't mind betting they paid for it too." She smiled mirthlessly. "Yes," she said, "they paid for it. I daresay you remember what happened; there must have been some account in the English papers." I shook my head. "I wasn't reading the papers just then," I explained. "I was chasing about the Pacific learning to be a sailor."