Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/31

 beyond a doubt, one Intelligence Department has offered a cool million. And we have every reason to believe the whole business is being engineered by one of the trickiest foreign agents who ever bought a war-map."

Kestner sighed a little wearily. "And the gentleman's name?" he casually inquired.

The chief was silent for a moment or two, as though weighing the expediency of making further confession to one still outside the Service. Then he pulled out a drawer and tossed a mounted group-photograph across the desk.

"That's an enlargement from a moving-picture film showing the crowd that watched the launching of our new submersible destroyer. We stumbled on it by accident. But in that crowd is one face, and if you look at it under the glass you'll see the face of the man who's organized the entire system that we've got to beat. That's about all we know, beyond the fact, apparently, that he's working with foreign people he's brought over for the purpose, people unknown to our operatives here."

"But who's the man?" repeated Kestner, running a casual eye along the welter of closely crowded figures on the mounted picture.