‘The original and much fuller dossier is in a sealed envelope in a bank vault. The bank directors have powers to forward it to New Scotland Yard if I fail to show up within one week or any other interval I care to specify. Now, my dear Howard, I am not threatening you. And I am giving you the opportunity to become custodian, if I may put it that way, of the bullion and the diamonds from the Kimberley mines. At the end of the agreed-upon waiting period, I am prepared to give you, Adams and Metcalfe one-seventh each of the proceeds. The other four-sevenths go to myself and my three South African associates.’

He sat there for a complete minute as if sandbagged. God alone knows what schemes, conjectures squirmed through his brain together with the lust for this enormous sum of money – at least £14,000, but more, much more if he managed to cheat us. When he began to speak, I saw that he had swallowed the bait. My story had to be true. If I was a police agent I would have turned him and his associates in, not shown him I had the evidence. Even if I was a police agent but crooked, I would have blackmailed him. As it was, I was offering him a share in the proceeds of a colossal robbery. To a man like Howard, it was only common sense that someone like myself should first of all have found out all he could about the people he was going to choose to be custodians of the loot.

He began to ask for details, to find out what I had in mind.

I told him how we had planned the robbery down to the last detail, especially with respect to the subsequent proceedings. After the robbery the gold and diamonds had been crated and slipped on board a small freighter near Port Natal. The skipper and crew thought they were shipping arms for Irish insurgents. When the freighter approached England the crates were to be transferred to a fishing-boat. Again the crew were under the impression they contained arms. My three associates travelled with the ships to oversee matters; I had come on by the fastest available P. and O. liner to find a suitable place in which to hide everything.

‘You trust your colleagues to turn up?’

‘I know them. I’ve worked with them for years. They know full well that the only real chance of us getting away with it is to carry out our original plan.’ I paused. ‘And they know me. They’ll turn up.’ I looked at him. ‘Well, what do you say?’