“This is the most perfect machine in the world, Riaz. Have no fear. Every cog has been tested and is of the staunchest steel. Every part has been put in its proper place by the greatest genius alive.” “I don't have to remind you that a few cogs in the Foreign office have slipped badly.” The door opened to admit two brisk, prosperous-looking gentlemen. “I fear we are late,” said the foremost. “It was unavoidable, I assure you.” “It is never too late,” said Zimmerlein, advancing to shake hands with the new-comers. Then, while they were laying aside their overcoats, he stepped swiftly to the door of the drafting-room and called out: “Thorsensel! Come here, please. And you also, Martin.” One of the men in the outer room, laid down the instrument with which he was working over a huge blue-print; with a sigh of resignation, he removed his green eye-shield, smoothed out his wrinkled alpaca coat, and came slowly, diffidently into the private office. He was a middle-aged, stoop-shouldered, sunken-faced man, with a drooping moustache that lacked not only in pride but in colour as well. The ends were gnawed and scraggly, and there were cigarette stains along the uneven edges. Otherwise, this sickly adornment was straw-coloured. Thick spectacles enlarged his almost expressionless blue eyes; as one looked straight into them, the eyeballs seemed to be twice the normal size. This man was John Thorsensel, civil engineer, American--born of Norwegian parentage, graduate of one of the greatest engineering universities in the country. You would go many a league before encountering a more unimposing, commonplace person,--and yet here was the most astute secret servant in the German Kaiser's vast establishment. Not Zimmerlein, nor Riaz, nor any of the important-looking individuals who skulked behind respectable names, not one of them was the head and heart of the sinister, far-reaching octopus that spread its slimy influence across the United States of America. John Thorsensel, an insignificant toiler, was the master-mind, the arch-conspirator. It was his hand that rested on the key, his thought that covered everything, his infernal ingenuity that confounded the shrewdest minds on this side of the Atlantic. The last man in the world to be suspected,--such was John Thorsensel, bad angel.