“But why did the wireless message say ‘seventeen’ instead of ‘seventy-one’?”

“I’ve thought that out. Carton must have given that wireless operator his own memorandum to copy off on to a form, and he never read the copy through. The operator made the same mistake we all did, and read it as 17.1.22 instead of 1.71.22. The thing I don’t know is how Minks got on to cabin 17. It must have been sheer instinct.”

“And the dispatch to General Smuts? Who tampered with that?”

“My dear Anne, you don’t suppose I was going to have a lot of my plans given away, without making an effort to save them? With an escaped murderer as a secretary, I had no hesitation whatever in substituting blanks. Nobody would think of suspecting poor old Pedler.”

“What about Colonel Race?”