"Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the bootlegger, home from the sea, And the moonshiner home from the still..."

"You haven't changed a bit," she laughed

"Nor you--you're just as lovely as ever--more so! Your eyes, now. I love brown eyes----"

She stopped him with a solemnly upraised hand.

"What are you doing now?" she asked.

"Divers things, and, on the whole, nothing much," he said vaguely. "London's paralytic! I'm just wondering whether it'd be worth while going back to Paluna--you remember, I ran a one-man revolution there and made myself President about three years back. Being President of a South American Republic is some game, believe uncle!"

He was, as a matter of fact, doing rather more than divers things. When he left he returned to Scotland Yard and made his way to the office of the Assistant Commissioner.

"You can take it from me, Bill," he informed that gentleman, "that Hannassay's new typist's all right. I've known her for years---her father took me out of the workhouse and educated me. Incidentally, he started me on my adventurous career. I tell you, anyone who was brought up by Smiler Hawthorne and after that went in for stockbroking or market gardening or anything else respectable and dull would have been a blistering Robot!"

"I'm glad to hear it," said Bill Kennedy drily. "I'd already gathered that you weren't a Robot, laddie, from the fact that you took an hour and a half to find out about her when you'd known her for years. Now you can push off, because I work sometimes. See you later."

Storm went to his own room, and shortly after Inspector Teal arrived to make his report. "Well, Teal?" he prompted briskly.

"Nothing," said Mr. Teal sleepily. "The process of reformation continues. I looked up Lew Mecklen and Gat Morini this morning, and they greeted me like a long-lost brother--which isn't like Lew and the gentle Gat. They've been over for a month now, and they haven't made a joke yet. Birdie Sands has been out six weeks, and we haven't had a thing on him. And Prester John hasn't cracked a crib for two months--and I know he was hard up two months ago. Mr. Arden, when a lot of old lags all start reforming at once my nose itches!"

"Uh-huh," said Storm thoughtfully. "And they're only a few."

"With more coming into the fold every day," supplemented Mr. Teal.

He was a big slow-moving man, red-faced and sleepy-eyed, beginning to pay the price of his youthful robustness as muscle turned to fat and easy living irresistibly increased his circumference. He was invariably tired and invariably bored--it was an affectation of his of which he was intensely proud.

Storm stared out of the window.

"When I got into this job," he said, "I had ideas. I thought Special Branch dealt with active crooks--not the boys who'd turned good. This is more subtle than I'd like it to be."

Inspector Teal said nothing.

Rousing himself slightly with what seemed a terrific effort, he reached into a pocket and extracted a small packet therefrom. From this packet he removed a smaller packet, and from the smaller packet he detached the pink wrapper.

"If it wasn't so absurd," said Storm, "I'd tell you the only explanation I can see that fits."

Mr. Teal conveyed a wafer of chewing gum to his mouth and champed meditatively.

"Mr. Arden," he murmured drowsily, "if I hadn't heard things that make me want to offer that same theory, I'd say it was absurd. But I stood Prester John a drink this afternoon, and I picked his pocket. I ought to have been a criminal really--people wouldn't suspect me, because I look so innocent. Anyway, I found something interesting. Look at this."

From his waistcoat pocket he took something that glittered and laid it on Storm's desk.

It was a little silver triangle. In the centre a similar triangle was picked out in black enamel, and in the centre of this a silver alpha had been picked out in the enamel.

Storm looked at it closely, turned it over and inspected the back, and laid it down.

"What's this got to do with anything--if anything?" he demanded, and Mr. Teal shook his head. "That's what I want to know."

The bell under Storm's desk rang discordantly, and he picked up the receiver.

"Hullo... Speaking."

He listened for a moment, and then spoke insistently.

"Struth! No, I don't know anything about it--yet. Look here, Mr. Blaythwayt, will you wrap that letter up exactly as it came, envelope and all, and send it round at once by special messenger? ... Yes, New Scotland Yard.... Right-thanks!"

"I know that man Blaythwayt," said Mr. Teal, as Storm replaced the receiver. "He's manager--"

"Shut up!" snarled Storm. "I'm thinking."

He swung over to the window and stood looking down for some moments. Then, abruptly, he came back to his desk and pressed a bell.

To the man who answered the summons he gave the trinket that Teal had brought him.

"Go down to Records," he commanded, "and ask 'em for anything they've got in which anything like this figured."

It was only ten minutes before the man returned, bearing with him a small bundle of papers. Storm lighted a cigarette and went through them carefully, and at the end he looked steadily across at Inspector Teal.

"Listen," he said. "Just over three months ago a man was found dead by the railway between Priory and Kearsney--that's on the Dover-London line. There were no marks of violence, and since he had a ticket from Dover to Victoria it was supposed that he'd simply fallen out of the train. He was identified as Henri Francois Joubert, a Frenchman domiciled in England, who'd made his fortune on the Stock Exchange--jobbing, you know--about thirty years ago. There'd be no records of the case if it hadn't been for one curious thing. In one of his pockets was this!"

He tapped a photograph with his forefinger, and Mr. Teal peered at it with his habitual indifference.

It was a picture of a visiting card. In the centre had been sketched a design similar to that on the silver triangle of Prester John, and underneath was roughly scrawled, "February, 1899."

"Mr. Blaythwayt," said Storm, "has just received through the post a similar card, and all that's written under the triangle is Harchester. What do you know about Harchester, Teal?"

"One of the biggest and best public schools," said Mr. Teal. "Joe Blaythwayt was educated there."

Storm leaned back in his chair and exhaled a thin streamer of smoke. Then he looked at Inspector Teal and smiled. Storm's smile was the most attractive thing about him. It flickered about his lips for a moment as though he didn't want to give it a chance, and then it broke out--irrepressibly boyish. It bubbled over with mischief.

Head back and a little to one side, eyes dancing, Storm smiled.

"Absurd be catlicked!" Storm said. "Teal, this is going to be Big!"