a plan in his head. I was not so much
frightened as exasperated. I turned from the tunnel-mouth and groped
into the darkness before me. I might as well prospect the kind of
prison into which I had blundered.

I took three steps--no more. My feet seemed suddenly to go from me and
fly upward. So sudden was it that I fell heavy and dead like a log, and
my head struck the floor with a crash that for a moment knocked me
senseless. I was conscious of something falling on me and of an
intolerable pressure on my chest. I struggled for breath, and found my
arms and legs pinned and my whole body in a kind of wooden vice. I was
sick with concussion, and could do nothing but gasp and choke down my
nausea. The cut in the back of my head was bleeding freely and that
helped to clear my wits, but I lay for a minute or two incapable of
thought. I shut my eyes tight, as a man does when he is fighting with a
swoon.

When I opened them there was light. It came from the left side of the
room, the broad glare of a strong electric torch. I watched it
stupidly, but it gave me the fillip needed to pick up the threads. I
remembered the tunnel now and the Kansas journalist. Then behind the
light I saw a face which pulled my flickering senses out of the mire.

I saw the heavy ulster and the cap, which I had realized, though I had
not seen, outside in the dark laurels. They belonged to the journalist,
Clarence Donne, the trusted emissary of Blenkiron. But I saw his face
now, and it was that face which I had boasted to Bullivant I could
never mistake again upon earth. I did not mistake it now, and I
remember I had a faint satisfaction that I had made good my word. I had
not mistaken it, for I had not had the chance to look at it till this
moment. I saw with acid clearness the common denominator of all its
disguises--the young man who lisped in the seaside villa, the stout
philanthropist of Biggleswick, the pulpy panic-stricken creature of the
Tube station, the trim French staff officer of the Picardy chateau ...
I saw more, for I saw it beyond the need of disguise. I was looking at
von Schwabing, the exile, who had done more for Germany than any army
commander ... Mary's words came back to me--'the most dangerous man in
the world' ... I was not afraid, or broken-hearted at failure, or
angry--not yet, for I was too dazed and awestruck. I looked at him as
one might look at some cataclysm of nature which had destroyed a
continent.

The face was sm