letter
would have had if it had reached the man for whom it was destined. But
it did not ... why, we don't know. We do know, however, that the Emperor
is keenly anxious to regain possession of his letter ... you yourself
were a witness of his anxiety and you know that he put the matter into
the hands of the man Clubfoot."

"Well," I observed thoughtfully, "Clubfoot, whoever he is, seems to have
made every effort to keep my escapades dark...."

"Precisely," said Francis, "and lucky for you too. Otherwise Clubfoot
would have had you stopped at the frontier. But obviously secrecy is an
essential part of his instructions, and he has shown himself willing to
risk almost anything rather than call in the aid of the regular police."

"But they can always hush these things up!" I objected.

"From the public, yes, but not from the Court. This letter looks
uncommonly like one of William's sudden impulses ... and I fancy
anything of the kind would get very little tolerance in Germany in
war-time."

"But who is Clubfoot?" I questioned.

My brother furrowed his brows anxiously.

"Des," he said, "I don't know. He is certainly not a regular official of
the German Intelligence like Steinhauer and the others. But I _have_
heard of a clubfooted German on two occasions ... both were dark and
mysterious affairs, in both he played a leading role and both ended in
the violent death of one of our men."

"Then Tracy and the others...?" I asked.

"Victims of this man, Des, without any doubt," my brother answered. He
paused a moment reflectively.

"There is a code of honour in our game, old man," he said, "and there
are lots of men in the German secret service who live up to it. We give
and take plenty of hard knocks in the rough-and-tumble of the chase, but
ambush and assassination are barred."

He took a deep breath and added:

"But the man Clubfoot doesn't play the game!"

"Francis," I said, "I wish I'd known something of this that night I had
him at my mercy at the Esplanade. He would not have got off with a
cracked skull ... with one blow. There would have been another blow for
Tracy, one for Arbuthnot, one for the other man ... until the account
was settled and I'd beaten his brains out on the carpet. But if we meet
him again, Francis, ... as, please God, we shall! ... there will be no
code of honour for _him_ ... we'll finish him in cold blood as we'd kill
a rat!"

My brother thrust out his hand at me and we clasped hands