The Corners of the Globe Read Online Free PDF

my satisfaction that he has what it takes. His war record confirms he is strong-nerved and fearless.
    I cannot be sure Max has told me everything he has learnt. He has had dealings with a high-ranking Japanese police officer, Kuroda, who is attached to their delegation. Kuroda evidently knew Sir Henry quite well. He was a senior member of the team that investigated the attempted assassination of the late Tsar (when he was Tsarevich) in Japan in 1891, in which Lemmer was implicated. Ireton, we must assume, knows more than he is telling about Lemmer. His number two, Schools Morahan, is a resourceful fellow. And I am struck by the fact that Ireton’s secretary, Malory Hollander, lived in Japan for several years as a young woman.
    There is the additional complication that Sir Henry first met Mme Dombreux while serving with our embassy in Petrograd. He and her late husband are said to have been friends. I suspect there is much more to be learnt about Dombreux’s activities, in particular who exactly he was working for. It follows there may also be much more to be learnt about Sir Henry.
    Max mistakenly believed Lionel Brigham of our delegation to be one of Lemmer’s spies. His mistake had the effect, however, of drawing into the open the assassin Tarn, who I now believe murdered both Sir Henry and Spataro. Tarn’s killing by Max – the incident in Mayfair on 1st April that Special Branch dealt with for us – removed a probable threat to the lives of other participants at the conference.
    The activities of Max’s RFC friend, former sergeant Samuel Twentyman, never sanctioned by me, led fortuitously to the unmasking of two members of our delegation who really did work for Lemmer, Herbert Norris and Alfred Dobson. It also forced into the open Lemmer’s White Russian henchwoman, Nadia Bukayeva. She killed Norris and Dobson to prevent them revealing any of Lemmer’s secrets under interrogation. Twentyman’s life was saved by the intervention of Morahan, who appears to be more scrupulous than Ireton.
    I know queries have been raised about the role of an Arab youth nicknamed le Singe (real name, we believe, Seddik Yala, a Tunisian) in the killing of Tarn and a spate of burglaries at the hotels and offices of various delegations, including the Japanese. There is a lack of reliable information about le Singe. I am optimistic we may yet be able to benefit from whatever secrets he has succeeded in stealing. There is reason to believe some of those secrets concern Lemmer. He is therefore worthy of our attention.
    Tarn worked for whoever paid him. I believe Norris, acting on Lemmer’s behalf, hired him to eliminate Sir Henry and to kill Spataro in order to cover his tracks and incriminate Mme Dombreux. Later, it appears, the Japanese hired Tarn to find Lemmer, presumably in order to neutralize a threat Lemmer posed to them.
    This threat seems likely to have been something contained in the documents stolen from the luggage of Lou Tseng-Tsiang, head of the Chinese delegation, when he stopped in Tokyo on his way to the conference – referred to on Sir Henry’s list as the Chinese box. We originally assumed those documents were stolen by the Japanese, but Kuroda told Max he thought they had actually been stolen by Lemmer. The suggestion is that one of the documents was a letter sent in early 1917 by Japanese prime minister Terauchi to German foreign minister Zimmermann, agreeing terms for Japan to switch to the German side in the war. We know the Americans feared such a development. Their intervention in Mexico at that time confirms they believed a sneak attack by Japan was a genuine possibility. Fortunately, Zimmermann overplayed his hand by making overtures to the Mexicans which we were able to use to push the Americans into declaring war on Germany, at which point the Japanese naturally denied they had ever dreamt of switching sides.
    If Lemmer has proof the Japanese were willing to betray their allies in 1917, the threat he poses