t of bullion. Contrary to the usual practice, only
two men were sent in charge of it. Their dead bodies were afterwards
discovered, and the gold was never recovered. No one seems to have had
the least suspicion that the gentlemanly engineer at the mine was likely
to have had something to do with the business, and when, shortly
afterward, he resigned his post and took a passage to Europe, he
received the highest possible testimonials from his manager and
directors. I have no doubt, myself, that he was the prime mover in the
robbery, for his salary was a small one, and directly afterwards he
spent six months in Paris, where his expenditure would have been lavish
for a millionaire."

"That was where my father met him," remarked Evie. "I remember him
expressing surprise at the simplicity of Mannering's life at St. Alban's
in view of the luxury with which he had been surrounded when they had
met previously."

"Just so," said the detective. "But his Paris career ended as it had
commenced. He disappeared suddenly, without a word of farewell to any of
his acquaintance, and had it not been for one bit of evidence, I should
have had not the slightest idea as to what he had been doing with
himself in the interval between that time and his arrival at St.
Alban's. You may remember that a scientific expedition was despatched by
the Dutch government about six years ago to make some investigations in
the interior of New Guinea?"

I shook my head.

"It started six months after Mannering disappeared from Paris, and from
the time it left Batavia _en route_ for New Guinea not a word has ever
been heard of it."

"You cannot mean to infer that Mannering had anything to do with that?"
I asked, incredulously.

"I infer nothing," replied Forrest. "But I do know that a pocketbook,
which had belonged to a chemist attached to the exploring party, was one
of the documents I found in his bag. The book contained a number of
notes upon the liquefaction of gases, and these may very likely have
first interested Mannering in the subject. As I have since discovered
from a search of the registers at Lloyds that there were quite a number
of ships lost about the same time in those seas, I cannot help thinking
that our friend had served an apprenticeship under the black flag at sea
before taking to land piracy."

"At that rate he must have been the greatest criminal on earth," I
declared.

"He was certainly the biggest I ever came across," replied