en them;
in what circumstances; in whose hands? Again and again I travelled old
ground, exhumed buried cases, dwelt upon names of forgotten criminals,
and of big world people. An hour's intense mental concentration told me
nothing; the dark of the hour before dawn gave way to the cold breaking
of morning light, and yet I tossed in an agony of blank and futile
reasoning. I must have slept from the sheer blinding of the brain
somewhere about that hour; and in my dreaming I got what wakefulness
had denied to me. There in my sleep was the whole history of the stones
written for me. I remembered the Liverpool landing-stage; the departure
of the Star liner, _City of St. Petersburg_, for New York; the arrest
of the notorious jewel-thief, Carl Reichsmann; the discovery of the
opal and diamond necklace upon him; the restoration of it to--to--the
brain failed for a moment--then with a loud cry of delight, which
roused me, I pronounced the words; to Lady Hardon, of 202A, Berkeley
Square, London.

"It is a ridiculous situation to sit up in bed asking yourself if your
dream be reality, or your reality be a dream; but when I awoke with
that name on my lips, the joy of the thing was so surpassing that I
repeated the name again and again, muttering it as I got into my
clothes, using it all the time I washed, and speaking it aloud when I
stood before the glass to tie my cravat. Here, I suppose the folly of
the whole repetition dawned upon me, for, of a sudden, I shut my lips
firm and close, and bethought me of the man in the next room. What of
him? Was he still there? I listened. There was no sound, not so much as
of a heavy sleeper. He had gone then, and had Lady Hardon's jewels--yet
Lady Hardon, Lady Hardon----nay, but you could never know the sudden
and awful emotion of that great awakening which came to me in that
moment when my memory travelled quickly on to Lady Hardon's end; for I
remembered then that she went down in the great steamer _Alexandria_,
which was lost in the Bay of Biscay twelve months before I discovered
the golden ship in the dockyard at Spezia; and I recalled the fact,
known worldwide, that her famous jewels, this necklace amongst them,
had gone with her to her end. Lost, I say; yet that was the account at
Lloyd's; lost with never a soul to give a word about her agony; lost
hopelessly in the broad of the bay. How came it, then, that this man
who knew the ruffians in the dockyard below; who seemed a common
fellow,