"He keeps one manservant to do the cooking and cleaning. Or a series of them, rather. Two have already got the sack for being inquisitive. There's a new man there now."
"Any friends? Close friends, I mean?"
Charters tried to gnaw at his cropped moustache. "I was coming to that. As I say, I had my attention rather distracted by that Willoughby affair, which put me up to the eyes in work. But this much I can tell you. Hogenauer left Germany after, apparently, a quarrel with the government; and also apparently he didn't leave it with much money. Since he's been living at Moreton Abbot, he's had only one friend-in fact, outside Antrim the only man who's visited him at all. And this friend is Albert Keppel; he's dropped the `von.' "
"Uh-huh. The physicist," said H.M., making a vacant circle in the air with his pipe. "I heard him lecture. Pretty sound feller. And Keppel is a kind of exchange professor who's been lecturin' for a year at the University of Bristol. And Keppel lives in Bristol. And at Filton, in that same Bristol, is the biggest aeroplane works in England. And they're workin' double-shift, night and day, behind locked doors, on God-knows-what. Hey? Still…"
He made another circle in the air with his pipe.
"And still," I said, "I don't see what it has to do with me’
"Because L. is in England," replied Charters sharply. He got up from the rail, and began to pace the veranda. He seemed to be looking back over the past. "I dare say you didn't know L. Merrivale and I did — at least, we knew his name."
"But not the man?"
"But not the man," said Charters grimly, "or the woman. L. may be a man or a woman. There's always been a dispute about that. All we know is that L. was the cleverest limb of Satan that ever plagued the Counter-Espionage Service. My God, Merrivale, do you remember '15. The tanks? L. very nearly got away with that information, if we hadn't stopped the bolt-hole. You see, L. wasn't and isn't a German, so far as we know; yet he might be German or English or French. He's a kind of international broker for secrets, and he doesn't care particularly whom he serves so long as he's paid. He's out after the big secrets. He gets them, and he sells them to the highest bidder."
"But look here," I protested: "nearly twenty years after all the fuss, he must be a real Iron Man if he's still working. And surely you must have some clue- "