Amongst his colleagues he had a bad name. It is not necessary to particularise the circumstances which produced his reputation, but it is a notorious fact that he escaped appearing in an unsavoury divorce case by the skin of his teeth. So unpopular was he that twice Merros Club and a fashionable night club of which he was a member and an _habitué_, were raided by the police in the hope of compromising this flighty politician. The raid had been planned by the wife of one of his colleagues, and that Willings was not unaware of the fact, was proved when the newspaper he owned aimed a bitter attack on the lady’s unfortunate husband, an attack so worded, so framed, that the Minister retired from public life. A well-built man inclined to plumpness, slightly bald, there was no gainsaying his personal charm. He was under the impression that his introduction to Thalia Drummond had been skilfully manœuvred by himself. He would have been horrified to know that the lady who introduced him had received instructions that morning from the Crimson Circle to bring the introduction about. The Crimson Circle had its agents in all branches of life and in all classes. There were book-keepers, there was at least one railway director, there was a doctor and three _chefs d’hotel_ amongst the hundred who obeyed the call of the Crimson Circle. They were well paid and their duties were not onerous. Sometimes, as in this case, they had no more to do than to bring about an introduction between two people whom the Crimson Circle desired to meet, but in every case their instructions came to them in exactly the same form. The organisation of this great force was extraordinarily complete. In some uncanny way the chief of the Crimson Circle had smelt penury and disaster almost as soon as the suffering recipients of these two evil factors were aware that they were present. One by one they had been absorbed, each ignorant of the other’s identity, and profoundly ignorant of their master. He had come to them in strange places and circumstances. Each had his own function to perform, and generally the part which was played by the subordinate members of the league was ludicrously simple and unimportant. A few members of the Circle had, in a panic, made statements to police head-quarters, and from them it was learned how simple were some of the tasks which were given out by the mystery man.