tary sixth toe!" interrupted Cleek, fairly flinging
the eager query at him. "It is, eh? Well, by the Eternal! I once
knew a fellow--years ago, in the Far East--whose feet were malformed
like that; and if by any possibility----Stop a bit! A word more.
Is that man a big fellow--broad shouldered, muscular, and about forty
or forty-five years of age?"

"You've described him to a T, dear chap. There is, however, a certain
other peculiarity which you have not mentioned, though that, of
course, maybe a recent acquirement. The palm of the right hand----"

"Wait a bit! Wait a bit!" interposed Cleek, a trifle irritably. He
had swung away from the window and was now walking up and down the
room with short nervous steps, his chin pinched up between his thumb
and forefinger, his brows knotted, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.

"Saffragam--Jaffna--Trincomalee! In all three of them--in all three!"
he said, putting his running thoughts into muttered words. "And
now a dead man sticks his fingers in his nostrils and talks of
sapphires. Sapphires, eh? And the Saffragam district stuck thick
with them as spangles on a Nautch girl's veil. The Bareva for a
ducat! The Bareva Reef or I'm a Dutchman! And Barrington-Edwards
was in that with the rest. So was Peabody; so was Miles; and so,
too, were Lieutenant Edgburn and the Spaniard, Juan Alvarez. Eight of
them, b'gad--eight! And I was ass enough to forget, idiot enough
not to catch the connection until I heard again of Jim Peabody's
web foot! But wait! Stop--there should be another marked foot if
this is indeed a clue to the riddle, and so----"

He stopped short in his restless pacing and faced round on Mr. Narkom.

"Tell me something," he said in a sharp staccato. "The four other
dead men--did any among them have an injured foot--the left or the
right, I forget which--from which all toes but the big one had been
torn off by a crocodile's bite, so that in life the fellow must
have limped a little when he walked? Did any of the dead men bear a
mark like that?"

"No," said Narkom. "The feet of all the others were normal in every
particular."

"Hum-m-m! That's a bit of a setback. And I am either on the wrong
track or Alvarez is still alive. What's that? Oh, it doesn't matter;
a mere fancy of mine, that's all. Now let us get back to our mutton,
please. You were going to tell me something about the right hand
of the man with the web foot. What was it?"

"The palm bore certain curious hier