The third report was from a certain very alert English business man named Charles Johnson-Meads, who had offices in Fenchurch Street, London. It was Johnson-Meads who, by a curious statement he made to me one evening, in my rooms in Curzon Street, London, had first aroused my suspicions that a deep plot, in which Engstrom and Thornton were somehow implicated, was on foot. Johnson-Meads' report read: "I have strained every effort to learn more of these people and their mysterious movements in London. Contrary to my belief, I have now established the fact that Engstrom is, after all, the well-known Swedish engineer, and not the fraud I believed him to be." This, of course, appeared to be tolerably conclusive, and I was inclined to throw up the whole business at once and return to Paris, where other work urgently awaited my attention. It was clear enough from the report of the French Consul-General at Stockholm that Engstrom and Linner would not lend their name to any shady proceedings, while Johnson-Meads' apparent certainty that Engstrom was really what he professed to be seemed to cut away the principal basis of suspicion. Half an hour later I met Madame Gabrielle and Luigi in the same private room and showed them the three reports, which were as disappointing to them as they were to me. Of Madame Bohman, Gabrielle had failed to discover anything which could give reasonable grounds for suspicion. According to her own statement--for the resourceful Madame Gabrielle had speedily scraped up an hotel acquaintance with her--Madame Bohman and Engstrom were old friends, having known each other for years in Stockholm. Moreover, it was evident that Madame Bohman at least knew Stockholm well, for Madame Gabrielle was intimately acquainted with that city, and had no difficulty, by means of apparently artless conversation, in testing the accuracy of Madame Bohman's knowledge. To all intents and purposes we seemed to be on a wild-goose chase, and I expressed this view. "There is nothing in it," was my verdict. "I think the best thing we can do is to give up wasting our time and get back to Paris at once. You know there is the Morny affair waiting for me, and Hecq is anxious I should take it in hand without delay."