influenced the judge in his decision. Still, at the time, there
seemed no other reasonable decision to make. The testimony must
have appeared incredible; it must have appeared fantastic. No
man reading the record could have come to any other conclusion
about it. Yet it seemed impossible - at least, it seemed
impossible for me - to consider this great vital bulk of a man as
a monk of one of the oldest religious orders in the world. Every
common, academic conception of such a monk he distinctly
negatived. He impressed me, instead, as possessing the ultimate
qualities of clever diplomacy - the subtle ambassador of some new
Oriental power, shrewd, suave, accomplished.

When one read the yellow-backed court-record, the sense of old,
obscure, mysterious agencies moving in sinister menace,
invisibly, around Rodman could not be escaped from. You believed
it. Against your reason, against all modern experience of life,
you believed it.

And yet it could not be true! One had to find that verdict or
topple over all human knowledge - that is, all human knowledge as
we understand it. The judge, cutting short the criminal trial,
took the only way out of the thing.

There was one man in the world that everybody wished could have
been present at the time. That was Sir Henry Marquis. Marquis
was chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland
Yard. He had been in charge of the English secret service on the
frontier of the Shan states, and at the time he was in Asia.

As soon as Scotland Yard could release Sir Henry, it sent him.