And as he spoke, fixing his piercing glance first upon O’Shea and then upon myself, I recognized beneath that uncouth exterior the primitive, formidable force of the man. He presented the other comrades, by names which are not to be found in Debrett, and I reflected that impudence is indispensable to success in this sort of game. It became evident that, from Comrade Schmidt downward, nobody in the room was familiar with the appearance of either Zara or Wilson! An appalling-looking bearded creature attached itself to O’Shea. “We are anxious, Comrade,” it said, “to hear your personal account of the state of the work in South Africa.” “I am not too hopeful,” O’Shea replied gloomily, and glanced aside at me. “But,” said Schmidt, turning his dreadful little eyes in my direction, “Comrade Wilson brings us news from the United States which will be like new blood in our veins.” Somehow or another, O’Shea managed to shake off the Missing Link, and to secure a word aside with me. “Very full bag,” he murmured. “If we make no mistakes, we shall purge England and America of some unsavoury elements. But the second snag which I had foreseen rests on the fact that another steamer from Madeira has reached Southampton since we returned. There is one member of the S Group whom we left behind. He knows us both. He might quite conceivably have been in that steamer! His appearance here would raise the temperature considerably. And----” He was interrupted. The door of the room was thrown open and the foreign butler entered. “Comrade Macalister,” he announced. “The snag to which I referred!” said O’Shea. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE RAID I suppose that at some time during his life every man who has anything of the boy left in him has thought that he would like to take a fling at the great adventure of Secret Service. I feel called upon to assure these aspirants that a comfortable armchair is the better choice. Accident, or that Higher Power which the Arabs call Kismet, had cast me into the path of Edmond O’Shea. He had honoured me with his friendship, but had quite failed to recognize that I was a man of lesser stature than his own. Whilst granting every honour to marshal and statesman, personally I am disposed to believe that it was men such as O’Shea who steered the Allies to victory; and perhaps, hitherto, I had been inclined to look upon the Secret Service as a job for highbrows rather than for soldiers. This error was to be corrected. Conceive a large room filled with enemies of established order; fanatics, whose collected scruples would have left a thimble empty. Conceive that I and O’Shea, posing as members of their bloodthirsty organization, were amongst them as spies, pledged to bring about their ruin. Now, conceive that a “Comrade,” who knows us and has fared ill at our hands, is suddenly announced.