Blenkiron got out of his chair and stood above me.  ’I tell you, Dick, that man makes my spine cold.  He hasn’t a drop of good red blood in him.  The dirtiest apache is a Christian gentleman compared to Moxon Ivery.  He’s as cruel as a snake and as deep as hell.  But, by God, he’s got a brain below his hat.  He’s hooked and we’re playing him, but Lord knows if he’ll ever be landed!’

‘Why on earth don’t you put him away?’ I asked.

’We haven’t the proof—­legal proof, I mean; though there’s buckets of the other kind.  I could put up a morally certain case, but he’d beat me in a court of law.  And half a hundred sheep would get up in Parliament and bleat about persecution.  He has a graft with every collection of cranks in England, and with all the geese that cackle about the liberty of the individual when the Boche is ranging about to enslave the world.  No, sir, that’s too dangerous a game!  Besides, I’ve a better in hand, Moxon Ivery is the best-accredited member of this State.  His dossier is the completest thing outside the Recording Angel’s little note-book.  We’ve taken up his references in every corner of the globe and they’re all as right as Morgan’s balance sheet.  From these it appears he’s been a high-toned citizen ever since he was in short-clothes.  He was raised in Norfolk, and there are people living who remember his father.  He was educated at Melton School and his name’s in the register.  He was in business in Valparaiso, and there’s enough evidence to write three volumes of his innocent life there.  Then he came home with a modest competence two years before the war, and has been in the public eye ever since.  He was Liberal candidate for a London constitooency and he has decorated the board of every institootion formed for the amelioration of mankind.  He’s got enough alibis to choke a boa constrictor, and they’re water-tight and copper-bottomed, and they’re mostly damned lies . . .  But you can’t beat him at that stunt.  The man’s the superbest actor that ever walked the earth.  You can see it in his face.  It isn’t a face, it’s a mask.  He could make himself look like Shakespeare or Julius Caesar or Billy Sunday or Brigadier-General Richard Hannay if he wanted to.  He hasn’t got any personality either—­he’s got fifty, and there’s no one he could call his own.  I reckon when the devil gets the handling of him at last he’ll have to put sand on his claws to keep him from slipping through.’

Blenkiron was settled in his chair again, with one leg hoisted over the side.

’We’ve closed a fair number of his channels in the last few months.  No, he don’t suspect me.  The world knows nothing of its greatest men, and to him I’m only a Yankee peace-crank, who gives big subscriptions to loony societies and will travel a hundred miles to let off steam before any kind of audience.  He’s been to see me at Claridge’s and I’ve arranged that he shall know all my record.  A darned bad record it is