Chapter II (5)

"For neither," was the calm reply. "I have been for ten years the head of the Home Secret Service, an institution, I believe," he added, "which is never mentioned, and which not one person in a thousand knows anything about. The Secret Service still possesses the minute book I found on Mountjoy. If it had come into the hands of the police, they would have been compelled to have taken indiscriminate action and the results would have been disastrous."

"The jewels which you took from Kinlosti?" I asked.

"They were sold, and the amount stands to the credit of the Secret Service funds."

"What became of the treasure which was found in the Spens chateau?"

"It was all returned to its various owners. The Baroness sought my aid because she, too, is a member of our Secret Service."

"And Naida?"

"There was one of our complete successes," Mr. Thomson replied. "No court could have tried Kansky. There was no possible way in which he could have been brought to book for his crimes. The Secret Service undertook to dispose of him and it did."

"And what about the boy Arthur Dompers and his tutor Duncombe?" Rose asked.

"A little outside our ordinary course of business," Mr. Thomson admitted. "Some one or other, however, managed to convince Scotland Yard that Duncombe meant mischief, and I took the matter up to oblige them."

"What about the Duke and the Lorringham jewels?" Leonard enquired.

"That affair was passed over to my supervision," our chief explained, "because the Lorringham jewels are looked upon as a sort of national asset in the country, and their retention here is considered advisable for diplomatic reasons."

"Tell us," Rose begged, "exactly the meaning of the attack upon you in the Landsdowne Passage."

Mr. Thomson made a little grimace.

"It simply means," he admitted, "that the agents of the Black Peril have a secret service almost equal to our own. They flattered me so far as to believe that I was the only man likely to render abortive the great stroke which Creslin intended to deliver here. Hence their endeavour to anticipate my activities."

"You seem to have unlimited powers," Leonard said thoughtfully. "Doesn't it ever occur to you, sir, to make wider use of them? For instance, every Englishman knows Creslin was a terrible danger to the country. He stood for revolution, disorganisation and anarchy. Why didn't you have him secretly put out of the way?"

"Because the men who share with me the responsibilities of my position," Mr. Thomson replied, "my lieutenants and coadjutors, are men of imagination. We try to see a little beyond the actual circumstances with which we are confronted. It would have been the easiest matter in the world for us to have wiped Creslin from the face of the earth, but if we had done so, his principles would have lived after him. Everything except the man's corporal frame would have survived. To-day, a certain amount of the fascination of his doctrines has perished in the morass of ridicule which has sucked the man under. His doctrines never had a moment's chance in this country unless they were preached by a man of personal purity. We did better than slay Creslin. We made him ridiculous."

"What made you first approach us at Cromer?" Rose asked, with a touch of feminine curiosity. "What was there about us, I mean, which made you think we might be useful?"

"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

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| 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) |
| |
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Conundrums, by E. Phillips Oppenheim