rom myself that we are on trial, Chief Inspector!"

Kerry stood up and slowly moved his square shoulders in the manner of
an athlete about to attempt a feat of weight-lifting. From the
Assistant Commissioner's table he took the envelope which contained his
resignation, and tore it into several portions. These he deposited in a
waste-paper basket.

"That's that!" he said. "I am very deeply indebted to you, sir. I know
now what to tell the Press."

The Assistant Commissioner glanced up.

"Not a word about 719," he said, "of course, you understand this?"

"If we don't exist as far as 719 is concerned, sir," said Kerry in his
most snappy tones, "719 means nothing to me!"

"Quite so--quite so. Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which
I ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to
arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only
be compared to that employed by the Russian police under the Tsars."

Half an hour later Chief Inspector Kerry came out of New Scotland Yard,
and, walking down on to the Embankment, boarded a Norwood tramcar.
The weather remained damp and gloomy, but upon the red face of Chief
Inspector Kerry, as he mounted to the upper deck of the car, rested an
expression which might have been described as one of cheery truculence.
Where other passengers, coat collars upturned, gazed gloomily from the
windows at the yellow murk overhanging the river, Kerry looked briskly
about him, smiling pleasurably.

He was homeward bound, and when he presently alighted and went swinging
along Spenser Road towards his house, he was still smiling. He regarded
the case as having developed into a competition between himself and
the man appointed by Whitehall. And it was just such a position,
disconcerting to one of less aggressive temperament, which stimulated
Chief Inspector Kerry and put him in high good humor.

Mrs. Kerry, arrayed in a serviceable rain-coat, and wearing a plain felt
hat, was standing by the dining-room door as Kerry entered. She had a
basket on her arm. "I was waiting for ye, Dan," she said simply.

He kissed her affectionately, put his arm about her waist, and the two
entered the cosy little room. By no ordinary human means was it possible
that Mary Kerry should have known that her husband would come home at
that time, but he was so used to her prescience in this respect that he
offered no comment. She "kenned" his approach always, and at times
when h