u will find the car in which you came waiting to take you back,
Captain Granet," he announced.

The two men had paused. Granet was on the point of departure. With
the passing of his sudden apprehension of danger, his curiosity was
awakened.

"Do you mind telling me, Major Thomson," he asked, "how it is that you,
holding, I presume, a medical appointment, were selected to conduct
an inquiry like this? I have voluntarily submitted myself to your
questioning, but if I had had anything to conceal I might have been
inclined to dispute your authority."

Thomson's face was immovable. He simply pointed to the gate at the end
of the avenue.

"If it had been necessary, Captain Granet," he said coldly, "I should
have been able to convince you that I was acting under authority. As it
is, I wish you good-morning."

Granet hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders
and turned away.

"Good-morning, Major!"

He made his way down to the lane, which was still crowded with villagers
and loungers. He was received with a shower of questions as he climbed
into the car.

"Not much damage done that I can hear," he told them all. "The corner of
the house caught fire and the lawn looks like a sand-pit."

He was driven in silence back to the Dormy House. When he arrived there
the place was deserted. The other men were lunching at the golf club. He
made his way slowly to the impromptu shed which served for a garage. His
own car was standing there. He looked all around to make sure that he
was absolutely alone. Then he lifted up the cushion by the driving-seat.
Carefully folded and arranged in the corner were the horn-rimmed
spectacles and the silk handkerchief of the man who was lying at Market
Burnham with a bullet through his forehead.

CHAPTER XXIV

Mr. Gordon Jones rose to his feet. It had been an interesting, in
some respects a momentous interview. He glanced around the plain but
handsomely furnished office, a room which betrayed so few evidences of
the world-flung power of its owner.

"After all, Sir Alfred," he remarked, smiling, "I am not sure that it is
Downing Street which rules. We can touch our buttons and move armies
and battleships across the face of the earth. You pull down your ledger,
sign your name, and you can strike a blow as deadly as any we can
conceive."

The banker smiled.

"Let us be thankful, then," he said, "that the powers we wield are
linked together in the great cause."