draw
diagrams upon the blotting-pad before him, an occupation in which he
had been engaged for the last quarter of an hour.

Since its creation two years before, he had been Chief of Department
Z., the most secret section of the British Secret Service, with Malcolm
Sage as his lieutenant.

Department Z. owed its inception to an inspiration on the part of Mr.
Llewellyn John. He had conceived the idea of creating a secret service
department, the working of which should be secret even from the Secret
Service itself. Its primary object was that the Prime Minister and the
War Cabinet might have a private means of obtaining such special
information as it required. Department Z. was unhampered by rules and
regulations, as devoid of conventions as an enterprising flapper.

In explaining his scheme to Mr. Thaw, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Mr. Llewellyn John had said, "Suppose I want to know what Chappeldale
had for lunch yesterday, and don't like to ask him, how am I to find
out? I want a Department that can tell me anything I want to know, and
will be surprised at nothing."

With Mr. Llewellyn John to conceive a thing was to put it into
practice. He did not make the mistake of placing Department Z. under
the control of a regular secret service man.

"I'm tired of red-tape and traditions," he had remarked to Mr. Thaw.
"If I go to the front, they won't let me speak to a man lower than a
brigadier, whereas I want the point-of-view of the drummer-boy."

Mr. Llewellyn John had heard of Colonel Walton's exploits in India as
head of the Burmah Police, had seen him, and in five minutes the first
Chief of Department Z. was appointed. From the Ministry of Supply, Mr.
Llewellyn John had plucked Malcolm Sage, whom he later described as
"either a ferret turned dreamer, or a dreamer turned ferret," he was
not quite sure which.

In discovering Malcolm Sage, Mr. Llewellyn John had achieved one of his
greatest strokes of good fortune. When Minister of Supply his notice
had been attracted to Sage, as the man who had been instrumental in
bringing to light--that is official light, for the affair was never
made public--the greatest contracts-scandal of the war. It was due
entirely to his initiative and unobtrusive enquiries that a gigantic
fraud, diabolical in its cleverness, had been discovered--a fraud that
might have involved the country in the loss of millions.

Mr. Llewellyn John had recognised that this young accountant