"So far we have learnt nothing of importance." I was getting restive, I wanted to be _doing_ something. And yet, what was there to do? If I had thought all night by myself I could not have mapped out the situation more clearly. And as I looked at the little man, half lost in a big saddlebag chair, I felt ashamed of my irritation. A brain packed in ice was there, a logical machine of the first order. I could not expect humanity, sympathy, from such a one. Still, it would have helped! Hadn't I lost the one thing that made life worth living? What might not be happening to Connie even now? ... He read my thoughts like a book, confound him! "I understand your feelings, believe me, Sir John," he said, "but I must go my own way. We have not been talking for an hour yet! And if it is any consolation for you to know, let me say that it is imperative that we leave London to-night." "My nerves are strained. Please go on," I answered. "I can hardly tell you what a godsend your appearance on the scene really is to me." "In my business as agent and guard to my patron, Mr. Van Adams, it is always necessary that I keep more or less in touch with a certain circle of what I may describe as the aristocracy, the brains of International Crime. It has proved useful. After my visit to the Parthenon this morning I called upon an old acquaintance, the Honourable James Brookfield." "Lord Slidon's son? The man who got five years ..." "Yes. Of course, everyone knows his name. He made one little slip. Mr. Brookfield is very acute, and a great student of character. Entirely incapable of understanding a man or woman of decent morals and normal instincts, he is infallible in his judgment of the criminal type. Mr. Brookfield owes me any little service he can render, and I supplemented my request for information with a note for fifty pounds." "And you learnt ...?" "That Major Helzephron is all we have just heard, but a far more sinister and formidable person than anyone suspects. He is a man of marked intellectual powers. Below the veneer of coarse pleasures and fast life in London and Paris, there is something that glows like a hot coal. His appearances in town are irregular and fitful. His real life, Brookfield is certain of this, is lived far away from cities. And it is _a life with a purpose_." Quite suddenly and unexpectedly Mr. Danjuro began to reveal himself. The last words were spoken in a changed voice. The flatness and monotony had vanished. The words vibrated in the room, and I felt the thrill of them. It was the power of personality, and from then onwards I was hand in glove with this bizarre thinking machine that Fate had sent me. I tried to emulate Danjuro's dispassionate and scientific method. "It is curious," I said, "that a real intellect should care to spend part of its time in rake-helling round the low clubs, the gambling-rooms and stage-doors of London. Such a thing is known, but it is rare."