It was perfectly apparent that I had stumbled on a bigger thing than I knew. The murder in the house at Marlow was not an isolated incident committed by a solitary individual. I was up against a gang, and, thanks to Colonel Race’s revelations to Suzanne, and what I had overheard at the house at Muizenberg, I was beginning to understand some of its manifold activities. Systematized crime, organized by the man known to his followers as the “Colonel”! I remembered some of the talk I had heard on board ship, of the strike on the Rand and the causes underlying it⁠—and the belief that some secret organization was at work fomenting the agitation. That was the Colonel’s work, his emissaries were acting according to plan. He took no part in these things himself, I had always heard, as he limited himself to directing and organizing. The brain work⁠—not the dangerous labour⁠—for him. But still it well might be that he himself was on the spot, directing affairs from an apparently impeccable position.