The Secret Adversary

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one-man show. Deprived of their chief, the organization fell to pieces.
Kramenin had made a precipitate return to Russia, leaving England early
on Sunday morning. The gang had fled from Astley Priors in a panic,
leaving behind, in their haste, various damaging documents which
compromised them hopelessly. With these proofs of conspiracy in their
hands, aided further by a small brown diary taken from the pocket of
the dead man which had contained a full and damning resume of the whole
plot, the Government had called an eleventh-hour conference. The Labour
leaders were forced to recognize that they had been used as a cat's
paw. Certain concessions were made by the Government, and were eagerly
accepted. It was to be Peace, not War!

But the Cabinet knew by how narrow a margin they had escaped utter
disaster. And burnt in on Mr. Carter's brain was the strange scene which
had taken place in the house in Soho the night before.

He had entered the squalid room to find that great man, the friend of