nce's staff--asked Dick's name, which she knew perfectly
well. Not a smile or a flicker of an eyelid betrayed the fact.

"Mr. Rennell," said Dick with equal gravity.

The girl passed into an inner room, and a buzzer sounded. In a few
moments the girl came back.

"Mr. Graves will be here in a few minutes, Mr. Rennell, if you'll
kindly wait in his office," she said.

Dick thanked her, and walked through into the empty office. He waited
there till the girl had closed the door behind him, then went out by
another door and found himself again in the corridor. Opposite him was
a door with the words "Entrance 769" and a hand pointing down the
corridor to where the Intelligence service had established another
perfectly innocent front. Dick tapped lightly at this door, and a key
turned in the lock.

The man who stepped quickly back was one of the heads of the Civil
Service. The man at the flat-topped desk was Colonel Stopford. The man
on a chair beside him was one of the heads of the police force.

* * * * *

The Colonel, a big, elderly man, dressed in a grey sack suit, checked
Dick's commencing salutation. "Never mind etiquette, Rennell," he
said. "Sit down. You've heard about the man Von Kettler's escape last
night, of course?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's known, then. We can't keep things dark. He vanished from his
cell in the death house, three minutes before the time appointed for
his execution, though, as a matter of fact, he wasn't going to be
hanged. Apparently he walked through the walls.

"There's a sequel to it, Rennell. It seems he had told the
assistant-superintendent, a man named Anstruther, that he'd meet him
at a restaurant in town that night. He promised to leave him a
memento. Anstruther happened to remember this boast of Von Kettler's,
and he surrounded the restaurant with armed detectives, on the chance
that the fellow would show up. Rennell, _Von Kettler was there!_"

"He went to this restaurant, sir?"

"He walked in, just before the place was surrounded, engaged a table,
and ordered a sumptuous meal. He told the waiter his name, said he
expected a friend to join him, walked into the wash-room--and
vanished! Two minutes later Anstruther and his men were on the job.
Von Kettler never came out of the wash-room, so far as anybody knows.

"In the midst of the hue and cry somebody pointed to the table that
Von Kettler had engaged. There was a twenty-dollar bill upon it, and a