"A crime for which no logical reason existed," continued the colonel. "It puzzled everybody, till Hardcastle succeeded where his superior officers at Scotland Yard had failed. I believe he's still young. But that was less amazing than the German spy—you remember now, Sir Walter? The spy had been too clever for England and France—thanks to a woman who helped him. Peter Hardcastle got to know her; then he actually disguised himself as the woman—of course without her knowledge—arrested her, and kept an appointment that she had made with the spy. What was the spy called? I forget."
"Wundt," said Felix Fayre-Michell.
"No, I don't think so. Hardt or Hardfelt, or something like that."
"Anyway, a jolly wonderful thing. He's the first man at this business, and I hope you'll be able to secure him."
"If he comes, Sir Walter, don't let it be known that he is here. Keep it a secret. If Hardcastle could come down as your guest, and nobody know he was here, it might help him to succeed."
"And if he fails, then I hope you'll invite the Psychical Research Society."
Sir Walter let the chatter flow past him; but he concentrated on the name of Peter Hardcastle. He remembered the story of the spy, and the sensation it had aroused.
Millicent Fayre-Michell also remembered it.
"Mr. Hardcastle declined to let his photograph be published in the halfpenny papers, I remember," she said. "That struck me as so wonderful. There was a reason given—that he did not wish the public to know him by sight. I believe he is never seen as himself, and that he makes up just as easily to look like a woman as a man."
"Some people believe he is a woman."