A girl helped out by footmen stepped down into the avenue, carpeted now with the yellow autumn leaves. Even at the distance it was impossible to mistake her; her charm, her beauty were the wonder of England. And on the instant, as in a flash of the eye, I recalled the painted picture hanging in the great house in Berkeley Square, the picture from which this creature’s mutilated photograph had been taken, the picture of a young girl, in an ancient chair, with no ornament but a bit of jade on a cord about her neck. “It’s the young Duchess of Hurlingham,” I said. The big creature beside me was struggling to rise, his voice in an excited flutter. “Sure,” he said, “God Almighty didn’t throw me down. When she went up to that conference in Montreal, He had young Hurlingham on the spot—fine, straight, clean youngster as ever was born. It was love her at sight; an’ now”—he made a great gesture as though to include something without a visible limit—“she’s got all these places in England, an’ all that Standard Oil money that belonged to his mother’s people.” The girl, radiant as a vision, was advancing on the carpet of golden beech leaves, and I hastened to put a final query, the thing I had come here to find out. I had given up the idea of an arrest. The man was dying. “What did you do with the registered bonds that you got when you cracked the vault of the British Embassy in Washington the night before you went to Bar Harbor? They had Lord Dovedale’s name on them, and they could not be negotiated.” The whole sagging body of the unsteady creature strained toward the advancing vision as toward an idol. His voice reached me, stuttering as with fatigue. “That’s the stuff I put up with Westridge for the loan—go and take it away from him!” CHAPTER XII The Menace We never could persuade Walker to discuss his adventures in enforcing the prohibition Amendment: perhaps because the methods of the service were in use and could not be revealed. But one night, when we pressed him, he took the proofs of a magazine story out of a locked file and gave them to us. “Here,” he said, “is the great peril to the Amendment. We had to suppress the whole magazine issue to get this story out. Of course the elements in this story are fictitious, but on any day they may become an appalling reality.” We read the story. And here it is: “Five Millions is a Big Sum of Money.” * * * * * “Sure, it’s a big sum of money. But I’m going to do this thing up right! You heard me wishin’ the other day that I could double cross the bunch of cranks that’s a-runnin’ this country. Well, I’ve done stopped wishin’. I’m goin’ to do something to double-cross ’em. You hear what I say, Stetman! I’m a-goin’ to offer five millions of dollars to any chemist who can find the active principle in alcohol!” The attorney, tall, angular, incisive, did not move.