"The fact, perhaps, that you looked so innocuous," was the smiling reply. "I have agents in many walks of life, and the one thing I aim at as much as possible is to select recruits who not only appear simple-minded and innocent, but who actually are. You are none of you intriguers by disposition; you are simple English gentlepeople. You have escaped suspicion many times for this reason and have therefore been able to succeed, when any ordinary agent would have been suspected from the first." "I see," Rose murmured. "You will gratify me," Mr. Thomson suggested, "if you open your envelopes." We obeyed. Then I saw what I had never dreamed of seeing in my life--not one but five thousand-pound Bank of England notes. "I have treated you all the same," our benefactor said. "I hope that you will never regret this year out of your lives. I have answered all your conundrums. I will now ask you one. What are you going to do with your money?" "I don't know," Rose gasped. "I am going to buy a share in my father's business and go back to the wine trade," Leonard decided. "Half this money will make a new man of him." "I am going to marry Rose," I declared. "But you haven't asked me!" she protested indignantly. I glanced at Leonard. "The year's up, I suppose, old fellow," he said, with a sigh. "We both ask you to marry us, Rose." "Bolshevists!" she exclaimed. "I mean we ask you to choose," he corrected. She gave me her hand. Leonard drank a glass of champagne in gloomy silence and afterwards shook hands with both of us. Rose and he exchanged a few earnest sentences. Mr. Thomson spoke a valedictory word. "My friends," he said, "to-night we part. I have helped, I hope, to bring colour into your lives. I ask but one thing of you in return, and that is--silence for twelve months." We promised, and we kept our word. THE END +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note:-- | | | | Punctuation errors have been corrected. | | | | The following suspected printer's errors have been addressed.| | | | Page 11. insufficent changed to insufficient. | | (an insufficient audience) | | | | Page 113. Gomorroh changed to Gomorrah. | | (Sodom and Gomorrah) | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Conundrums, by E. Phillips Oppenheim