raft defences of London.

Malcolm Sage was convinced that somewhere there was at work a
controlling mind, one that weighed every risk and was prepared for all
eventualities. Individuals had been shadowed, some had been arrested,
much to Sage's disgust. The efforts of the organisation had frequently
been countered and its objects defeated; but Department Z. had hitherto
been unable to penetrate beyond the outer fringe. The most remarkable
thing of all was that no document of any description had been
discovered, either on the person of those arrested, or through the
medium of the post.

Scotland Yard stoutly denied the existence of the organisation. They
claimed to have made a clean sweep of all secret service agents in
their big round-up on the outbreak of war. Whatever remained were a
few small fry that had managed to slip through the meshes of their net.
Malcolm Sage merely shrugged his shoulders and worked the harder.

When it had been discovered that the famous Norvelt aeroplane, which
was to give the Allies the supremacy of the air, had been copied by the
Germans, the War Cabinet regarded the matter as one of the gravest
setbacks the Allied cause had received. Mr. Llewellyn John had openly
reproached Colonel Walton with failure. Again when time after time a
certain North Sea convoy was attacked, the Authorities knew that it
could be only as a result of information having leaked out to the
enemy. A raid into the Bight of Heligoland had been met in a way that
convinced those who had planned it that the enemy had been warned,
although the utmost secrecy had been observed. All these things had
tended to cause the War Cabinet uneasiness, and Department Z. had been
urged to redouble its efforts to find out the means by which
information was conveyed to the enemy.

"We must watch and wait, just hang about on the outer fringe. When we
find the thread it will lead to the centre of things," Sage had
remarked philosophically. In the meantime he worked untiringly,
keeping always at the back of his mind the problem of this secret
organisation.

Day by day the record of Mr. Montagu Naylor's activities enlarged.
With him caution seemed to have become an obsession. As Malcolm Sage
went through the daily reports of his agents he was puzzled to account
for many of Mr. Naylor's actions other than by the fact that
circumlocution had become with him a habit.

Among other things that came to light was Mr. Naylor's fond