Character guide

Hugh Drummond

major

Also known as Drummond, Captain Drummond, Captain Hugh Drummond

Drummond moves through drawing rooms and wrecked houses with the same unflappable cheer, lighting a cigarette over a single patched boot while the police see only accident. What shakes him is not danger but the suspicion that a friend's death was arranged for profit, and that the dead man's discovery now sits in his own breast-pocket. His stubborn refusal to accept the tidy official version is what drags the diamond syndicate's careful plans into the open.

Mr. William Robinson

major

Also known as Mr. Robinson

Robinson hosts the unconscious Drummond in his New Forest house with the courtesy of a man who has already decided how the interview will end, and he speaks of revenge on Drummond as a weakness he would choose over Professor Goodman's secret itself. To his subordinate Freyder he is 'Chief,' and the cold ferocity that makes even that hardened man shudder is the same quality he turns on his own captive brother. His patient cruelty sets the moral temperature of the book's middle chapters.

Mr. Edward Blackton

major

Also known as Blackton, Edward Blackton, Ted

Blackton arrives unannounced among the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate's directors and coolly announces that the anonymous threatening letter to Professor Goodman must have come from someone in the room, watching Lewisham's telltale start with satisfaction. Sir Raymond fears him the way a boy fears the headmaster, and the syndicate's assumption that he is merely their paid servant is exactly the misreading he encourages. His private plans for Goodman's process are the hinge on which the whole conspiracy turns.

Professor Goodman

major

Also known as Goodman, old Goodman, the Professor

Goodman is the unworldly scientist at the center of a bidding war he barely understands, lunching cheerfully with Drummond one day and reduced to a single patched boot the next. His written orders that the process be given to the world—entrusted to his lawyer Tootem—outmaneuver the syndicate that believed Blackton had destroyed the notes. Even in captivity, facing a furnace and a tormentor who calls him 'dear brother,' his stubbornness is the thing his enemies cannot quite calculate.

Sir Raymond Blantyre

major

Also known as Blantyre, Raymond, Sir Raymond

Sir Raymond chairs the directors' panic when Drummond reveals that Goodman's notes survive and that Blackton holds them, and he is the one who must murmur assent while Blackton dissects the room's secrets aloud. His restlessness under Blackton's soft voice is the restlessness of a man who knows the arrangement has inverted: the servant is now the master. When the reckoning comes, he is the lesser man who pays while others get off.

Mr. Freyder

supporting

Also known as Julius Freyder, Mr. Julius Freyder

Freyder watches Robinson's face and shudders at a ferocity he has never seen on any man, then calmly raises the operational point—what about Drummond—that his employer has overlooked in his relish. He is the one who judges how long a stunned captive will stay unconscious, and his competence is what makes Robinson's household run. His burns and his ruined face are the cost of being useful to a man who calls him 'my dear fellow.'

Carl Peterson

major

Also known as Peterson, old Peterson, friend Peterson

Peterson moves through the story as a professional operator, hiring out his talents to a frightened diamond syndicate while quietly pursuing his own ends. He is a man of elaborate disguises, careful plans, and no scruples whatsoever; his victims are murdered out of hand rather than postponed. Drummond's struggle to escape him — lashed to a ship's structure, semaphoring a warning to Ted Jerningham — establishes Peterson as the force the entire early plot must outrun.

Mr. Lewisham

supporting

Also known as Lewisham, the late Mr. Lewisham

Lewisham sits among the men who paid Professor Goodman a quarter of a million pounds to suppress his discovery, and he is the weakest of them. When Blackton announces that the threatening letter must have come from someone in the room, Lewisham's start gives him away before a word is spoken. His panic — the dread of a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster — turns the syndicate's closed circle into a room full of suspects and sets the mystery's machinery in motion.

Algy Longworth

supporting

Also known as Algy, Longworth

Algy is a fixture of Drummond's circle, a man of cocktails and golf whose sudden engagement to Brenda Goodman transforms him into a public menace. His friends flee him; Drummond bolts the front door and invents illnesses to keep him out. Yet his devotion to Brenda places him at the center of the Goodman tragedy, and his insistence that the Professor's death was no accident pushes Drummond toward the truth.

Professor Scheidstrun

supporting

Also known as Scheidstrun, old Scheidstrun

Scheidstrun never appears in the flesh; his persona is the mask Peterson wears when he lures Professor Goodman to a meeting meant to end in death. The substitution is uncovered only later, when Robinson reveals that he impersonated Scheidstrun to intercept the trap. The name thus marks the story's central method — nothing and no one is quite who they claim — and shows how completely Peterson's network has infiltrated ordinary academic life.

Ted Jerningham

supporting

Also known as Ted, Jerningham

Ted is lounging on his yacht with a girl named Pat when he spots Drummond semaphoring from the deck of the passing Gadfly. He spells out the warning without hesitation, takes the tiller of his forty-knot motorboat, and gives chase — though he pauses long enough to wonder whether he should bring Pat into danger. His instant loyalty and unflappable nerve make him the hinge on which Drummond's escape turns.

Toby Sinclair

minor

Also known as Sinclair

A minor character, possibly an acquaintance of the main cast.

Brenda Goodman

supporting

Also known as Brenda

Brenda arrives at the Drummonds' house on the evening of her father's death, sheltered by her mother and hovered over by a distraught Algy. She is kept in the dark about the murder, the diamond discovery, and the threatening letter, while the adults around her trade significant glances over her head. Her presence gives the early chapters their emotional weight: the human cost of a discovery worth killing for.

Mr. Jabez Leibhaus

minor

Also known as Leibhaus, Mr. Leibhaus

A minor character, possibly involved in the diamond trade.

Irma

minor

A female character, possibly connected to Peterson or the syndicate.

Denny

minor

Also known as the faithful Denny

A servant or loyal companion, possibly to Drummond.

Mr. Tootem

minor

Also known as Tootem, Austin Friars, Mr. Tootem senior, young Tootem

A businessman, possibly connected to the financial aspects of the plot.

William Anderson

minor

Also known as Mr. Anderson, Mr. William Anderson

A character who appears to be a separate individual, possibly a client or associate.

The Comte de Guy

minor

Also known as The Comte, Edward Blackton—alias Carl Peterson—alias the Comte du Guy

An alias used by Blackton or Peterson, adding to the mystery.

Phyllis

minor

A minor female character, possibly a love interest or relative.

Mrs. Goodman

minor

Also known as Poor Mrs. Goodman

Professor Goodman's wife, mentioned in the narrative.

Frau Scheidstrun

minor

Also known as Frau

Professor Scheidstrun's wife, a minor presence.

Henry Lewisham

minor

Also known as Henry

A relative of Mr. Lewisham, possibly a son.

The S.Y. Gadfly

minor

Also known as Gadfly, the Gadfly

A yacht that serves as a location for key events.

John Perkins

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.

Mrs. Lewisham

minor

Mr. Lewisham's wife, mentioned in the narrative.

Sir Bryan Johnstone

minor

A minor character, possibly an official or authority figure.

Mr. Atkinson

minor

Also known as Atkinson

A minor character, possibly a business associate.

Henry Lakington

minor

A minor character, possibly involved in the plot.