"Can I go--Mr. Beale will vouch for me?"

As he left the charge-room he beckoned the detective, and when they were together in the street Beale found that all the Parson's flippancy had departed.

"I'm sorry I got you into that scrape," he said seriously. "I ought to have been unfrocked, but I was sentenced for my first crime under an assumed name. I was not attached to any church at the time and my identity has never been discovered. Mr. Beale," he went on with a quizzical smile, "I have yet to commit my ideal crime--the murder of a bishop who allows a curate to marry a wife on sixty pounds a year." His face darkened, and Beale found himself wondering at the contents of the tragic years behind the man. Where was the wife...?

"But my private grievances against the world will not interest you,"

Parson Homo resumed, "I only called you out to--well, to ask your pardon."

"It was my own fault, Homo," said Beale quietly, and held out his hand.

"Good luck--there may be a life for you in the new land."

He stood till the figure passed out of sight, then turned wearily toward his own rooms. He went to his room and lay down on his bed fully dressed. He was aroused from a troubled sleep by the jangle of the 'phone. It was McNorton.

"Come down to Scotland House and see the Assistant-Commissioner," he said, "he is very anxious to hear more about this factory. He tells me that you have already given him an outline of the plot."

"Yes--I'll give you details--I'll be with you in half an hour."

He had a bath and changed his clothes, and breakfastless, for the woman who waited on him and kept his flat and who evidently thought his absence was likely to be a long one, had not arrived. He drove to the grim grey building on the Thames Embankment.

Assistant-Commissioner O'Donnel, a white-haired police veteran, was waiting for him, and McNorton was in the office.

"You look fagged," said the commissioner, "take that chair--and you look hungry, too. Have you breakfasted?"

Beale shook his head with a smile.

"Get him something, McNorton--ring that bell. Don't protest, my good fellow--I've had exactly the same kind of nights as you've had, and I know that it is grub that counts more than sleep."

He gave an order to an attendant and not until twenty minutes later, when Beale had finished a surprisingly good meal in the superintendent's room, did the commissioner allow the story to be told.

"Now I'm ready," he said.

"I'll begin at the beginning," said Stanford Beale. "I was a member of the United States Secret Service until after the war when, at the request of Mr. Kitson, who is known to you, I came to Europe to devote all my time to watching Miss Cresswell and Doctor van Heerden. All that you know.

"One day when searching the doctor's rooms in his absence, my object being to discover some evidence in relation to the Millinborn murder, I found this."

He took a newspaper cutting from his pocket-book and laid it on the table.

"It is from _El Impartial_, a Spanish newspaper, and I will translate it for you.

"'Thanks to the discretion and eminent genius of Dr. Alphonso Romanos, the Chief Medical Officer of Vigo, the farmers of the district have been spared a catastrophe much lamentable' (I am translating literally). 'On Monday last, Senor Don Marin Fernardey, of La Linea, discovered one of his fields of corn had died in the night and was already in a condition of rot. In alarm, he notified the Chief of Medicines at Vigo, and Dr. Alphonso Romanos, with that zeal and alacrity which has marked his acts, was quickly on the spot, accompanied by a foreign scientist. Happily the learned and gentle doctor is a bacteriologist superb. An examination of the dead corn, which already emitted unpleasant odours, revealed the presence of a new disease, the verde orin (green rust). By his orders the field was burnt. Fortunately, the area was small and dissociated from the other fields of Senor Fernardey by wide _zanzas_. With the exception of two small pieces of the infected corn, carried away by Dr. Romanos and the foreign medical-cavalier, the pest was incinerated.'"

"The Foreign Medical-Cavalier," said Beale, "was Doctor van Heerden. The date was 1915, when the doctor was taking his summer holiday, and I have had no difficulty in tracing him. I sent one of my men to Vigo to interview Doctor Romanos, who remembers the circumstances perfectly. He himself had thought it wisest to destroy the germ after carefully noting their characteristics, and he expressed the anxious hope that his whilom friend, van Heerden, had done the same. Van Heerden, of course, did nothing of the sort. He has been assiduously cultivating the germs in his laboratory. So far as I can ascertain from Professor Heyler, an old German who was in van Heerden's service and who seems a fairly honest man, the doctor nearly lost the culture, and it was only by sending out small quantities to various seedy scientists and getting them to experiment in the cultivation of the germ under various conditions that he found the medium in which they best flourish. It is, I believe, fermented rye-flour, but I am not quite sure."

"To what purpose do you suggest van Heerden will put his cultivations?"

asked the commissioner.

"I am coming to that. In the course of my inquiries and searchings I found that he was collecting very accurate data concerning the great wheatfields of the world. From the particulars he was preparing I formed the idea that he intended, and intends, sending an army of agents all over the world who, at a given signal, will release the germs in the growing wheat."

"But surely a few germs sprinkled on a great wheatfield such as you find in America would do no more than local damage?"

Beale shook his head.

"Mr. O'Donnel," he said soberly, "if I broke a tube of that stuff in the corner of a ten-thousand-acre field the whole field would be rotten in twenty-four hours! It spreads from stalk to stalk with a rapidity that is amazing. One germ multiplies itself in a living cornfield a billion times in twelve hours. It would not only be possible, but certain that twenty of van Heerden's agents in America could destroy the harvests of the United States in a week."

"But why should he do this--he is a German, you say--and Germans do not engage in frightfulness unless they see a dividend at the end of it."

"There is a dividend--a dividend of millions at the end of it," said Beale, graver, "that much I know. I cannot tell you any more yet. But I can say this: that up till yesterday van Heerden was carrying on the work without the aid of his Government. That is no longer the case.

There is now a big syndicate in existence to finance him, and the principal shareholder is the German Government. He has already spent thousands, money he has borrowed and money he has stolen. As a side-line and sheerly to secure her money he carried off John Millinborn's heiress with the object of forcing her into a marriage."

The commissioner chewed the end of his cigar.

"This is a State matter and one on which I must consult the Home Office.

You tell me that the Foreign Office believe your story--of course I do, too," he added quickly, "though it sounds wildly improbable. Wait here."

He took up his hat and went out.

"It is going to be a difficult business to convict van Heerden," said the superintendent when his chief had gone, "you see, in the English courts, motive must be proved to convict before a jury, and there seems no motive except revenge. A jury would take a lot of convincing that a man spent thousands of pounds to avenge a wrong done to his country."

Beale had no answer to this. At the back of his mind he had a dim idea of the sheer money value of the scheme, but he needed other evidence than he possessed. The commissioner returned soon after.

"I have been on the 'phone to the Under-Secretary, and we will take action against van Heerden on the evidence the factory offers. I'll put you in charge of the case, McNorton, you have the search-warrant already? Good!"

He shook hands with Beale.

"You will make a European name over this, Mr. Beale," he said.

"I hope Europe will have nothing more to talk about," said Beale.

They passed back to McNorton's office.

"I'll come right along," said the superintendent. He was taking his hat from a peg when he saw a closed envelope lying on his desk.

"From the local police station," he said. "How long has this been here?"

His clerk shook his head.

"I can't tell you, sir--it has been there since I came in."

"H'm--I must have overlooked it. Perhaps it is news from your factory."

He tore it open, scanned the contents and swore.

"There goes your evidence, Beale," he said.

"What is it?" asked Beale quickly.