"Hardly. I told him three thousand two hundred and fifty. I thought that number would do as well as any. Much better than the real number for a variety of reasons which I won’t stop to detail. Suffice it, the number agrees with the number which you, in your capacity of informer to the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the attache, and which he already knew." "By George! With all the other dope you’ve got in the Burley case, you must be pretty nearly ready to close in on the man?" "So _I_ thought. But Headquarters didn’t. You see, I had followed Burley along a devious route to Brussels. By the way, he nearly slipped through my fingers there. I muffed him, so to speak. But I picked him up again before he left Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz." "Coblenz? In the thick of the American occupation?" "Precisely. And bang under the noses of the American army, Mr. Hutchins walked into a tobacconist’s shop and sent a letter to the Japanese embassy. At this tremendously exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the majesty of its omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to take you in tow and mark time." "We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo. "You might say we hall-marked it, what little we had. Linking Burley up with the Japs on the one hand and with the smuggled Fontaine diamonds on the other, wasn’t such a bad week’s work, even though we haven’t got the goods on him yet." "That’s all very well, my boy. But what do I get today? Here is your second piece of information. I get word to quit the Japanese case." "What for?" "For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain dangerous American radicals who are temporarily in London. How do you like that?" "I don’t like it, Mr. Pryor. And I don’t blame _you_ for not liking it. It looks like a raw deal. But are you sure it hasn’t some remote connection with Burley?" "No, I’m not sure. The devil has many irons in the fire. So has Hutchins Burley. Most energetic gentlemen whether of the diabolic or the celestial brand can gobble up an astonishing number of miscellaneous jobs. For all I know, Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb Thrower; or he may be the old chief _Agent Provocateur_; or he may be merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose word can make Headquarters quail. It’s a conundrum. A pretty, picture-puzzle, play-box conundrum, if you like. Still, a conundrum. And I’m heartily sick of conundrums. I’m done with them. I joined the Secret Service to become a detective, not a musical comedy magician." "You don’t mean to say you are going to resign?" "I do. You have guessed my third item of news. As fast as a steamer can carry me, I mean to proceed to Washington, there to give my resignation and sundry pieces of my mind to the Chief in person." "But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished method of the Service, isn’t it? Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you have another reason." "I have. Item four: I’m being followed."