the generally accepted opinion on the matter. But being
curious, I naturally made the most minute search when I searched his
place at St. Alban's. I didn't find much there, it is true, but I did
secure a clue which ultimately led me to some lodgings which he had
occupied some three or four years previously, and there, by the merest
good luck, I discovered that when he had departed he had left behind him
a worn-out travelling-bag, and in that bag was a bundle of papers which
supplied me with sufficient information to reconstruct his history to
some extent, though I should not like to swear to the absolute accuracy
of every detail of his biography as I see it."

"Was there nothing at all found at St. Alban's then?" asked Evie.

"I fancy you must have seen in the papers a pretty full account of all
that the police discovered there?" said the detective.

"Yes," replied Evie. "We read a lot of stories, but they varied to such
an extent that we really did not know what to believe."

Forrest smiled. "Now I come to think of it, the reporters did give their
imaginations free reins, but you can take it from me that, with the
exception of the plunder he amassed after his return from that
Continental trip, and the apparatus for the production of the liquid
hydrogen, there was very little in his house of interest to me or you.
There was his bank-book, and some correspondence with a learned
professor at the Royal Institution. I followed up both clues. At the R.
I. I discovered nothing. Mannering had merely posed as a wealthy
amateur in chemistry, and of course he met with every assistance when he
had asked for help in following up his researches into the behaviour of
liquid gases. At his bank also, very little was known about him. When he
had come to St. Alban's he had opened an account by a payment into it of
six or seven thousand pounds in Bank of England notes. He had drawn
steadily upon the account until it was nearly exhausted, and, in point
of fact, there was only a few pounds to his credit from the time when he
commenced his career on the road, until a week or two after his return
from Amsterdam, when he paid in two thousand pounds in gold, and a
fortnight later swelled his balance with a similar amount."

"That was the proceeds of the Brighton mail robbery," I remarked.

Forrest nodded. "That was his only really big coup. As for his other
plunder, he probably disposed of the proceeds of all his early cruises
on the Cont