he had sent the report to England which was stolen from my uncle's desk.
That report was brought over by Lady Maggie Trent, Lord Dorminster's
stepdaughter, who was really the brains of the enterprise and under
another name was acting as governess to the children of Herr Essendorf,
President of the German Republic. Half an hour before his death, my
uncle was decoding this dispatch in his library. I saw him doing it, and
I saw the dispatch itself. He told me that so far as he had gone
already, it was full of information of the gravest import; that a
definite scheme was already being formulated against this country by an
absolutely unique and dangerous combination of enemies."

"Those enemies being?"

Nigel shook his head.

"That I can only surmise," he replied. "My uncle had only commenced to
decode the dispatch when I last saw him."

"Then I gather, Lord Dorminster," the Minister said, "that you connect
your uncle's death directly with the supposed theft of this document?"

"Absolutely!"

"And the conclusion you arrive at, then?"

"Is an absolutely logical one," Nigel declared firmly. "I assert that
other countries are not falling into line with our lamentable abnegation
of all secret service defence, and that, in plain words, my uncle was
murdered by an agent of one of these countries, in order that the
dispatch which had come into his hands should not be decoded and passed