to say he is in it?” he gasped in utter astonishment.

It was the Premier’s turn to be surprised.

“Why—who is he?” he asked. “Professor Rudford had never even heard his name and laughed when I suggested that he could have had anything to do with it.”

“He won’t laugh when he gets some real idea of Gronvold’s ability,” said Scott bitterly. “The man is one of the mysteries of the world of crime,” he went on. “Exactly who he is we don’t know—I mean we know little about his life. But we believe he is Norwegian born, though he has strong Russian characteristics. We know he studied at Leipzig. Tutors who knew him well speak with the utmost admiration of his amazing brain power as a student and the daring of his conceptions. But for some reason he never did well in examinations and attracted no attention whatever outside a very limited circle. Personally, I believe that for some strange reason he deliberately elected not to call attention to himself, for there is not the slightest doubt that he could with ease have captured every honour the University had to bestow. After leaving Leipzig he disappeared for some years. I don’t know how he spent them. But I do know that he is a chemist of amazing ability. He has, moreover, been mixed up with a number of puzzling international crimes, though we have never been able to bring any of them home to him. Do you remember the big bank robbery at Liverpool three years ago?”

The Premier nodded.

“You mean,” he said, “when the bank vaults were blown open with dynamite and half a million in gold stolen?”

“That’s the case,” said Scott. “Only it wasn’t dynamite, there was no explosion. The thick steel and stone walls of the vaulted safe had been melted through as if they had been butter. The story of an explosion was deliberately given out to deceive the thieves. But the fact is that some process was used of which we have no knowledge whatever.”

And he paused, then went on:

“Now I am pretty sure Gronvold was in that. I was called in before anything had been touched. And in one corner I picked up a scrap of paper bearing some queer formulae of which I could make nothing. It had evidently been dropped by accident. And it bore Gronvold’s name. Moreover, as I ascertained by a visit to Leipzig, where I saw some of the old University registers, it was in his handwriting. But where he is, how he got into England, how the burglary was effected 

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