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Rh as private secretary just after getting my degree at Oxford. I was to have gone into my father's business, where I am now, but my father suggested that I should see the world for a year or two. So I took this secretaryship, which seemed to promise a good deal of varied experience, and I had let the year or two run on to four years before the end came. The offer came to me through the last thing in the world I should have put forward as a qualification for a salaried post, and that was chess.'

At the word Trent struck his hands together with a muttered exclamation. The others looked at him in surprise.

'Chess!' repeated Trent. 'Do you know,' he said, rising and approaching Marlowe, 'what was the first thing I noted about you at our first meeting? It was your eye, Mr. Marlowe. I couldn't place it then, but I know now where I had seen your eyes before. They were in the head of no less a man than the great Nikolay Korchagin, with whom I once sat in the same railway carriage for two days. I thought I should never forget the chess eye after that, but I could not put a name to it when I saw it in you. I beg your pardon,' he ended