“Walk with me,” he said; “we may be noticed.... Ah, yes, my friend, you will grant it.” “Why should I grant it, pray?” said the amazed Dercum. “You will grant it,” replied Walker, “because you will not wish to answer in the English courts—in the English criminal courts—a question that has just occurred to me.” The Chief of the American Secret Service laughed; two persons connected with a Continental Embassy were regarding him. Then he went on: “How did it happen, Sir Henry, that when you came on Lord Rexford’s expedition on the Antarctic plateau, that morning, when you entered his snow hut some twenty minutes ahead of the other members of your expedition, and in that low temperature, in that deadly Antarctic temperature, you found everything frozen, the food, the very mercury in the thermometer, the bodies of the dead—how did it happen, Sir Henry”—and his hand moved on Dercum’s arm like a caress—“how did it happen that the ink on the canvas table was not also frozen?” CHAPTER XI The Girl in the Picture I advanced to meet the man with a sense of victory. The United States Secret Service had searched the world for him. He had been long concealed. But my sense of victory vanished when I saw him. He sat in a great chair on the long terrace that overlooked the sweep of lawn and the dark, rapid river. He had been, all the time, under our very noses. We had thought of every other place except an English country house within a jump of London. And he had been sitting here in every comfort that money could assemble. He did not rise when I was brought out to him. He leaned back in the chair, lifted his heavy face, and laughed! “And so,” he said, “you finally wormed it out of her.” I could not keep my voice level—so effectively was the man escaping us after all this search. And I did not know what the huge creature meant. On the night before, some one had called up Scotland Yard and said our man was here; the English Secret Service was giving us all the aid it could. The call from some shop in Regent Street could not be traced—so it had been a woman! I replied as though I were in his secret. “She knew you were safe.” He laughed again. “Sure, she knew it!” He pointed to a chair a few feet beyond him across a table. “Sit down,” he said. “I want to talk about her—that’s the reason I wanted you to come.” He laughed again. “You thought you’d sleuthed it out, eh? Not by a jugful. I sent her word to put you wise. I wanted to clear some things up before I cashed in. But it was a clean lie. What I wanted was somebody to listen while I talked about her. Sit down.” It was a strange introductory. But it was a mystery that had puzzled everybody, and I was willing to hear all that he had to say about it. I took the chair beyond him. He shot his head forward suddenly, in a tense gesture.