With great care, Harry Grant now chose his moment and his man. It seemed essential for him to clinch his suspicions, by a counter-check within the organization …The man, by a process of elimination, was to be Jack Lett; and the moment, whenever Lett was off his guard. Mrs Bannister, of course, would never talk; Charles Bannister was hard to get hold of, harder to pin down; and Esther was not the person whom Grant wished to trap … The opportunity came after Esther’s final New York meeting, one of those triumphant occasions which left its sponsors spent and exalted at the same time.

The immediate excitement, the flashguns and the autographs, gradually died away; by midnight that night, Esther was in bed, Mrs Bannister safe in her room, and Charles Bannister had got lost in a downtown club and was unlikely to come to the surface before daylight. Only Jack Lett remained; Jack Lett, and Harry Grant, sitting together in the deserted suite, contentedly lowering a bottle of Scotch whisky.

The moment, for Grant, was now propitious, since Jack Lett was more than usually complacent after a profitable finale to their New York stay; and Grant let it run on for a few minutes longer, patiently attentive to the other man, as Jack Lett enlarged on the evening’s triumph. The more he talked and the more whisky he downed, the more easily would Grant throw him off balance, when the time came for the surprise question.

Lett was at the very top of his form: confident, bouncing, full of commercial sunshine. He had, that evening, clinched some production deal which guaranteed his future for a long time to come.

“Harry,” he said, setting down his half-empty glass, “Harry, there’s no ceiling to this thing, at all. You saw them this evening, howling their heads off before the show was halfway through. We signed up over three hundred new Club members at the end of it. That means more uniforms, more badges, more everything.” He grinned. “The boys back in California will be working overtime – and they’ll be loving every minute of it.”

“Very gratifying,” said Harry.

“You bet it’s gratifying!” Lett downed the rest of his drink in one prodigious swallow, and began to pour himself another. As usual when he was pleased, he seemed to be outgrowing his clothes, expanding physically as his thoughts soared. Grant wondered what his blood pressure was … “She’s a wonder, that girl. And Mrs Bannister too: a fine, devoted woman. Between them they’ve put blindness on the map – and it’s going to stay that way.”

“What’s the total club membership, now?”

“It’s difficult to say, the way the thing’s growing all the time. It must be around the half-million mark, I guess.”

“Still trailing Hopalong Cassidy,” observed Harry.

“You stick around!” answered Lett energetically. “They’ve got themselves a long start, that outfit – but we’re only just hitting our stride. Esther will have them all beat, by the end of next year. Yes, sir!” he repeated: “She certainly has put blindness on the map.”