and how he got away with such an enormous weight of gold we never could make out. If he is really in this new discovery we are face to face with a terrible problem. The man is absolutely without scruple, and for three years he has had the use of half a million of money for his experiments. He may have done anything in that time.”

“But how did you know of him?” asked the Premier.

“It’s a queer story,” replied the other. “Simmons, one of our men in Christiansand came across, quite by accident, a drunken Norwegian sailor who told a strange story of the blowing up of a mountain by a tiny cartridge placed at the bottom of an old mine shaft. He actually mentioned Gronvold’s name, and claimed to have been one of his assistants. When he became sober he was evidently terribly alarmed at having talked, and denied the whole story. The same day he disappeared, and Simmons has been unable to trace him.”

He went on after a pause:

“Now the blowing up of a mountain is a fact. A hill nearly a thousand feet high in a wild lonely district north-east of Tonstad has absolutely disappeared—levelled out. To have done the work by ordinary means would have meant years of labour and would have cost a fortune. There can be no doubt that some entirely new force has been employed. Officially the occurrence is attributed to a landslide; actually it is and can be nothing of the kind. Now this, coupled with what the Norwegian sailor said, suggests that we ought to look into the matter. Whether the Norwegian Government knows anything about it I do not know, and the matter would be of such importance from the international point of view that we cannot make direct inquiries.”

“Will you take it in hand?” asked the Premier. “Whom will you get to help you? I am afraid the ordinary men would be of very little use.”

“I think I will run over to Paris and see Regnier,” replied Scott. “He has a fellow named Manton who will certainly be useful. He was in our flying corps and was invalided out owing to wounds. He has done some wonderful work and has an entirely new type of aeroplane which he invented and which, by the way, our people would have nothing to do with. Regnier swears by him. He works always with a French girl named Yvette Pasquet, who did some splendid intelligence work during the war, and her brother Jules. They will have nothing to do with anyone else when they are on a case, and they have had some amazing results.”

Crossing to Paris by the 

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