cked his desk and drew out a printed document
which he placed in the young man's hands.

"Now see here. This prospectus was printed off a week after you left for
Canada. You can know that by the printed date. Now what is the wording
written over it in ink?"

"'O.K., Clifford Matheson,'" read out Dean.

"Compare it with your two signatures."

"It's the same."

"Exactly. That prospectus was passed by Mr Matheson some time after you
imagined him dead and buried."

Dean could answer nothing. The world had turned upside down for him.
Larssen took the prospectus and the two specimen signatures, and locked
them away in his desk.

"Well?" he asked smilingly. "Am I the devil tempting you to run
crooked?"

"I must apologize, sir--apologize sincerely! I didn't know of all this.
I thought----I thought----"

"That's all over now. We'll forget it. You've proved to me you're sound
and straight. You've carried out orders well. Carry out future orders in
the same way, and I'll do everything I've promised for you. You know
that I never break a promise to my staff?"

"Yes, indeed, sir. That's well known."

"Well, my next order is this: take a fortnight's holiday and get strong
again.... Do you fish?"

"I'd like to."

"I'll put you in the way of some splendid fishing. Tarpon! After that
you'll return to England with me. Sound good to you?"

"You're too generous, sir!" answered the young fellow with deep feeling.

He was Larssen's man once again.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONFESSION

Riviere was at his glass-topped, bevel-edged bench in the private
biological laboratory at Wiesbaden, surrounded by his apparatus of
experiment. At the moment he was looking down with one eye through the
high-power immersion lens of his microscope at two tiny blobs of life in
a drop of water. From day to day the salinity of the water was being
slowly altered, and this was only one of thousands of experiments he had
planned on the effect of changing conditions of life on the elemental
organisms.

Every day he was passing in review scores of slides on which the
elemental reaction to abnormal conditions was unfolding itself for his
observation. Each drop of water was a world where the vital spark was
struggling against the harshness of nature. Each drop of water embodied
a fight of primitive protoplasm against disease. Each drop of water was
contributing its tiny quota to the new book of knowledge he hoped one
day to give to his fellow-men.