yet possessed a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewellery,
how came it that he had got that which the world thought to be lying on
the sands of the bay? You say, 'Pshaw, it was not the same bauble';
that is the obvious answer to my theorising, but in the recognition of
historic gems a man trained as I was never makes an error. I would have
staked my life that the jewels were those supposed to be under the sea;
and, moved to a state of deep excitement, I left my hotel without
breakfast, and mounted to the hill-top for tidings of the great vessel.

"But she had sailed, and the dock which had held her was empty.

"This discovery did not daunt me, for I had expected it. I should have
been surprised if she had been at her berth; and the fact that she had
weighed under cover of night fell in so well with my anticipation that
I waited only to ascertain officially what ships had left Spezia during
the past twenty-four hours. They told me at the Customs that the
Brazilian war-vessel built by Signor Vezzia weighed at three a.m.; but
more I could not learn, for these men had evidently been well bribed,
and were as dumb as unfee'd lawyers. I knew that their information was
not worth a groat, and hurried back to the Albergo to assure myself
that my neighbour with the necklace had sailed also. To my surprise, he
was at breakfast when I arrived at the hotel; and so one great link in
my theoretic chain snapped at the first test. As he had not sailed with
the others, he could have no direct connection with the nameless ship,
no nautical part or lot with her. But what was he, then? That I meant
to know as soon as opportunity should serve.

* * * * *

"I have led you up, Strong, step by step, through the details of this
work to this point, that you may have the facts unalloyed as I have
them; and may construct your history from this preamble as I have
constructed mine. I am now about to move over the ground more quickly.
I will quit Spezia, and ask you to come with me, after the interval of
nigh a year--during which no man had known that which I now tell
you--to London, where, in an hotel in Cecil Street, Strand, I was again
the neighbour of the man with the jewels whom I had taken so daring an
advantage of in Italy. Let me tell you briefly what had happened in the
between-time. The day on which the nameless ship left the dock, this
man--whom, I may say at once, I have always met under the nam