of the two hundred
and four really rich men in England. I am not likely to mistake you for
anybody else, and, more than this, your history is so interesting a one
that naturally I know much more about you than I should if you had lived
the dull and placid life of a city merchant."

"Tell me one thing before I go," asked Minute. "Where is the person you
refer to as 'X'?"

Saul Arthur Mann smiled and inclined his head never so slightly.

"That is a question which you have no right to ask," he said. "It is
information which is available to the police or to any authorized person
who wishes to get into touch with 'X.' I might add," he went on, "that
there is much more I could tell you, if it were not that it would
involve persons with whom you are acquainted."

John Minute left the bureau looking a little older, a little paler than
when he had entered. He drove to his club with one thought in his mind,
and that thought revolved about the identity and the whereabouts of the
person referred to in the little man's record as "X."

CHAPTER VII

INTRODUCING MR. REX HOLLAND

Mr. Rex Holland stepped out of his new car, and, standing back a pace,
surveyed his recent acquisition with a dispassionate eye.

"I think she will do, Feltham," he said.

The chauffeur touched his cap and grinned broadly.

"She did it in thirty-eight minutes, sir; not bad for a twenty-mile
run--half of it through London."

"Not bad," agreed Mr. Holland, slowly stripping his gloves.

The car was drawn up at the entrance to the country cottage which a
lavish expenditure of money had converted into a bijou palace.

He still lingered, and the chauffeur, feeling that some encouragement to
conversation was called for, ventured the view that a car ought to be a
good one if one spent eight hundred pounds on it.

"Everything that is good costs money," said Mr. Rex Holland
sententiously, and then continued: "Correct me if I am mistaken, but as
we came through Putney did I not see you nod to the driver of another
car?"

"Yes, sir."

"When I engaged you," Mr. Holland went on in his even voice, "you told
me that you had just arrived from Australia and knew nobody in England;
I think my advertisement made it clear that I wanted a man who fulfilled
these conditions?"

"Quite right, sir. I was as much surprised as you; the driver of that
car was a fellow who traveled over to the old country on the same boat
as me. It's rather rum that he should