Chapter 18
IT NEEDS a touch of the bizarre to waken thoroughly the interest of any great city, either in an individual or in an act. It was just the hint of gruesome mystery that the Feathered Serpent supplied, which raised the Farmer murder from a commonplace, if somewhat interesting, item of crime news to the importance it afterwards assumed.
It took little over twenty-four hours for London to appreciate the uncomfortable fact that somewhere in its midst was a secret organisation, ruthless in its methods, diabolically cunning in its plans, and though newspapers could hint, without allowing plainness of speech to approach the borderline of libel, that the Feathered Serpent was concerned with dealing vengeance on a very few members of the community, it happened that one of those few was
