"It simply means," he admitted, "that the agents of the Black Peril have a secret service almost equal to our own. They flattered me so far as to believe that I was the only man likely to render abortive the great stroke which Creslin intended to deliver here. Hence their endeavour to anticipate my activities."
"You seem to have unlimited powers," Leonard said thoughtfully. "Doesn't it ever occur to you, sir, to make wider use of them? For instance, every Englishman knows Creslin was a terrible danger to the country. He stood for revolution, disorganisation and anarchy. Why didn't you have him secretly put out of the way?"
"Because the men who share with me the responsibilities of my position," Mr. Thomson replied, "my lieutenants and coadjutors, are men of imagination. We try to see a little beyond the actual circumstances with which we are confronted. It would have been the easiest matter in the world for us to have wiped Creslin from the face of the earth, but if we had done so, his principles would have lived after him. Everything except the man's corporal frame would have survived. To-day, a certain amount of the fascination of his doctrines has perished in the morass of ridicule which has sucked the man under. His doctrines never had a moment's chance in this country unless they were preached by a man of personal purity. We did better than slay Creslin. We made him ridiculous."
"What made you first approach us at Cromer?" Rose asked, with a touch of feminine curiosity. "What was there about us, I mean, which made you think we might be useful?"
"The fact, perhaps, that you looked so innocuous," was the smiling reply. "I have agents in many walks of life, and the one thing I aim at as much as possible is to select recruits who not only appear simple-minded and innocent, but who actually are. You are none of you intriguers by disposition; you are simple English gentlepeople. You have escaped suspicion many times for this reason and have therefore been able to succeed, when any ordinary agent would have been suspected from the first."
"I see," Rose murmured.
"You will gratify me," Mr. Thomson suggested, "if you open your envelopes."
We obeyed. Then I saw what I had never dreamed of seeing in my life—not one but five thousand-pound Bank of England notes.
"I have treated you all the same," our benefactor said. "I hope that you will never regret this year out of your lives. I have answered all your conundrums. I will now ask you one. What are you going to do with your money?"
"I don't know," Rose gasped.