e affair turned out exactly as I had foreseen. At Elm
Street a couple of fellows jostled against me, and when the mix-up was
over the parcel containing my two sample records was gone. That was all
that had been wanted; my watch, pin, and money had not been touched.

"It was plain, then, that some one had an interest in preventing my
tracing up these particular records. Not Hugens, of course, but his
client, whoever he might be. Well, at least, it made the case more
interesting--yes, and more promising. Two nights later the house in
Madison Avenue was entered by second-story men while I was at dinner.
But the records and repeating apparatus had been removed to the
safe-deposit vaults, and my unknown opponent had drawn another blank.

"Getting exciting, wasn't it? And then for a month or more nothing
happened. You continued to convalesce and I kept on thinking.

"This impersonal opposition--well, there had been something of the same
sort once or twice before. You remember, in particular, the affair of
the private letter-box. A devilish intelligence had been at work there,
and some day, as I told you, the mystery would be cleared up.

"Then did we ever know who Mr. Aram Balencourt really was? An agent of
the 'Forty'? Well, perhaps so, but I can't help thinking that there was
always a bigger man behind him. The same conclusion would apply to the
case of that poor wretch Grenelli in the affair of the Russia and the
box of dynamite. Some one with brains pulled the strings to make all
these marionettes dance.

"Finally, there was your own adventure with the amiable Dr. Gonzales.
Did he ever remind you, even indefinitely, of some one else whom you
had known? Think carefully. Well, it doesn't matter. I was deceived
myself, and when I afterwards went to the Bellevue insane pavilion to
make some inquiries I found that he had long since been discharged as
cured.

"There was just one hypothesis--the existence somewhere of a strong and
alert personality; a genius along mechanical and scientific lines; a
creature of abnormally developed mentality and correspondingly
defective ethical nature; an intelligence absolutely passionless and
ruthless, playing the game entirely for its own sake, and equally
indifferent to the end and to the means used to attain it--in other
words, a monster. Quite an elaborate theory, you observe; but the
difficulty was to fit it to the individual. Looking back on the
problem, I accuse myself of being ra