That, then, was the meaning of Colonel Race’s presence on the Kilmorden Castle . He was out after the arch-criminal. Everything fitted in with that assumption. He was someone high up in the secret service whose business it was to lay the Colonel by the heels.

I nodded to myself⁠—things were becoming very clear to me. What of my part in the affair? Where did I come in? Was it only diamonds they were after? I shook my head. Great as the value of the diamonds might be, they hardly accounted for the desperate attempts which had been made to get me out of the way. No, I stood for more than that. In some way, unknown to myself, I was a menace, a danger! Some knowledge that I had, or that they thought I had, made them anxious to remove me at all costs⁠—and that knowledge was bound up somehow with the diamonds. There was one person, I felt sure, who could enlighten me⁠—if he would! The “man in the brown suit”⁠—Harry Rayburn. He knew the other half of the story. But he had vanished into the darkness, he was a hunted creature flying from pursuit. In all probability he and I would never meet again.⁠ ⁠…