Left alone, I lay back on the pillow in a frame of mind which I
believe novelists describe as "chaotic." I had expected something
rather unusual from my interview with McMurtrie, but these proposals
of his could hardly be classed under such a mild heading as that. For
sheer unexpectedness they about took the biscuit.

I had read in books of a man's appearance being altered so completely
that even his best friends failed to recognize him, but it had never
occurred to me that such a thing could be done in real life--let alone
in the simple fashion outlined by the doctor. Of course, if he was
speaking the truth, there seemed no reason why his plan, fantastic as
it might sound, should not turn out perfectly successful. A private
hut on the Thames marshes was about the last place in which you would
look for an escaped Dartmoor convict, especially when he had vanished
into thin air within a few miles of Devonport.

What worried me most in the matter was my apparent good luck in having
fallen on my feet in this amazing fashion. There is a limit to one's
belief in coincidences, and the extraordinary combination of chances
suggested by McMurtrie's smooth explanations was just a little too
stiff for me to swallow. I felt sure that he was lying in some
important particulars--but precisely which they were I was unable to
guess for certain.

That he wanted the secret of the new explosive, and wanted it badly,
there could be no doubt, but neither he nor Savaroff in the least
suggested to me a successful manufacturer of cordite or anything
else. They seemed to me to belong to a much more interesting if less
conventional type, and I couldn't help wondering what on earth such
a curious trio as they and Sonia could be doing tucked away in an