“The Crimson Circle,” he began, “is a man named Lightman, a criminal who committed several murders in France, was condemned to death, but was saved by an accident from execution. His full name is Ferdinand Walter Lightman, and on the date of his attempted execution his age was twenty-three years and four months. He was transported to Cayenne, and escaped from that settlement after murdering a warder, and it is believed got away to Australia. A man answering his description, but giving another name, was working for a storekeeper in Melbourne for eighteen months, and was afterwards in the employment of a squatter named Macdonald for two years and five months. He left Australia in a hurry, a warrant having been issued against him by the local police for attempting to blackmail his employer. “What happened to him subsequently we have not been able to trace until there appeared in England an unknown and mysterious blackmailer who signed himself the Crimson Circle, and who, by careful organisation and a display of remarkable patience and energy, gathered around him a large number of assistants, all of whom were unknown to one another. His _modus operandi_” (the inspector stumbled at the phrase) “was to find out somebody in a responsible position, who was either in need of money or in fear of prosecution for some offence which he or she had committed. He made the most careful inquiries before he approached his recruit, who was finally interviewed in a closed car driven by the Crimson Circle himself. Usually the rendezvous was one of the London squares which had the advantage of having four or five exits and a further advantage of being poorly lighted. You gentlemen are probably aware that the residential squares of London are the worst illuminated streets in the metropolis. “Another class of recruit the Crimson Circle was very eager to secure was the convicted criminal. In this way he dragged in Sibly, an ex-sailor of a particularly low intelligence, who was already suspected of having committed murder, and who was the very man for the Crimson Circle’s purpose. In this way he secured Thalia Drummond----” he paused--“a thief, and an associate of thieves. In this way, too, he found the black man who murdered the railway director. For his own purpose he put in Brabazon the banker, and would have taken Felix Marl only, unfortunately for Marl, they had been associated together in the very crime for which Lightman nearly lost his life. More unfortunate still, Marl recognised Lightman when he met him in England, and this is the reason why Marl was eventually destroyed, the murderer employing perhaps the most ingenious method that has ever been used by a homicidal criminal. “You can well understand, gentlemen,” he went on. They were following the little man with strained interest. “The Crimson Circle----” “Why did he call himself Crimson Circle?” It was Derrick Yale who asked the question, and for a little while the inspector was silent.