ting the ordinary sort of anarchist or regicide, who, after
all, does content himself with physical means. This infernal scoundrel,
as I must confess I was warned to begin with, is quite independent of
the rules of the game. He kills people by their own hands, not his, and,
literally, there seems no way of catching him."

"There must be a way, my dear Hendry," replied the German, who was the
very incarnation of mechanical officialism. "You look at these things as
consequences, I regard them only as rather extraordinary coincidences.
If this is anything like what you seem to think it, it is supernatural,
and I don't believe in that."

"There is a very easy way to convince yourself, my dear Von Hamner,"
replied Hendry, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose you go
and interview this modern Mephistopheles yourself?"

"Will you come with me if I do?" asked the German, with a straight stare
through his spectacles.

"Certainly. In our profession it is necessary to take risks. The thing
has gone far enough. Here we are in my room at New Scotland Yard, the
centre and stronghold of the British police system, and there is this
man or super-man, if you like, making no sign, doing nothing that will
give us a hold upon him, and yet killing our agents as fast as we send
them to find out what he is working at, and we know just as much to-day
as we did three weeks ago. Now, what is your idea?"

"Just this: if the English law won't touch him, do as we do in Germany,
take the law into your own hands. We know where the fellow is to be
found down in that slum near the Borough Road. Send a few of your
plain-clothes men there this afternoon, and we will follow in a cab.
Bring your bracelets with you, and I shall take my revolver. We don't
want any nonsense this time. If it goes on much longer we shall be the
laughing-stock of the whole force from end to end of Europe, and that
will not do us any good. Shall it be for this afternoon?"

"It will be better done now. He has worked mischief enough, and if we
are going to do it we may as well bring the thing to a head at once, as
they say in the States. Now I will give the instructions, and we will go
to lunch. It may be the last that either of us will eat, you know."

"Poof!" exclaimed Von Hamner, who was feeling not a little nettled at
this quiet challenge to test his personal courage. "You are the last man
on earth that I should have suspected of superstition, my dear Hendry.
But