“If you’d asked me an hour ago,” he said, “I should have told you to try Iris Villa, Acacia Road, Hampstead. I have just come from there.” “You saw him?” the Bishop enquired. “That’s just what I did not,” Fenn replied. “Why not?” Catherine demanded. “Because he wasn’t there, hasn’t been since three o’clock this afternoon.” “You’ve moved him?” Furley asked eagerly. “He’s moved himself,” was the grim reply. “He’s escaped.” During the brief, spellbound silence which followed his announcement, Fenn advanced slowly into the room. It chanced that during their informal discussion, the chair at the head of the table had been left unoccupied. The newcomer hesitated for a single second, then removed his hat, laid it on the floor by his side, and sank into the vacant seat. He glanced somewhat defiantly towards Catherine. He seemed to know quite well from whence the challenge of his words would come. “You tell us,” Catherine said, mastering her emotion with an effort, “that Julian Orden, whom we now know to be ‘Paul Fiske’, has escaped. Just what do you mean?” “I can scarcely reduce my statement to plainer words,” Fenn replied, “but I will try. The danger in which we stood through the miscarriage of that packet was appreciated by every one of the Council. Discretionary powers were handed to the small secret service branch which is controlled by Bright and myself. Orden was prevented from reaching the Foreign Office and was rendered for a time incapable. The consideration of our further action with regard to him was to depend upon his attitude. Owing, no doubt, to some slight error in Bright’s treatment. Orden has escaped from the place of safety in which he had been placed. He is now at large, and his story, together with the packet, will probably be in the hands of the Foreign Office some time to-night.” “Giving them,” Cross remarked grimly, “the chance to get in the first blow--warrants for high treason, eh, against the twenty-three of us?” “I don’t fear that,” Fenn asserted, “not if we behave like sensible men. My proposal is that we anticipate, that one of us sees the Prime Minister to-morrow morning and lays the whole position before him.” “Without the terms,” Furley observed. “I know exactly what they will be,” Fenn pointed out. “The trouble, of course, is that the missing packet contains the signature of the three guarantors. The packet, no doubt, will be in the hands of the Foreign Office by to-morrow. The Prime Minister can verify our statements. We present our ultimatum a little sooner than we intended, but we get our blow in first and we are ready.” The Bishop leaned forward in his place. “Forgive me if I intervene for one moment,” he begged. “You say that Julian Orden has escaped. Are we to understand that he is absolutely at liberty and in a normal state of health?” Fenn hesitated for a single second. “I have no reason to believe the contrary,” he said.