nch financier; then
lost by a New York dealer, who was taking it from Paris to Boston in
the steamship _Catalania_; the ship supposed to have foundered, with
the loss of all hands, off the Banks of Newfoundland, sixteen days
after the nameless ship left Spezia. I made a record of this trifle,
and forgot it until, many months later, a private communication from
the head of the New York Secret Service told me that the man I wanted
was in London; that he was an American millionaire, who owned a house
on the banks of the Hudson River; who had great influence in many
cities, who came to Europe to buy precious stones and miniature
paintings, a man who was considered eccentric by his friends. I kept
the notes, and hurried to England--for I had been to Geneva some
while--and took rooms in the hotel where Captain Black was staying.
Three days after I was disguised as you have seen me, selling him
miniatures. Within a week, by what steps I need not pause to say, I
knew that the jasper box, lost, by report, in the steamer _Catalania_,
was under lock and key in his bedroom.

"I cannot tell you how that discovery agitated me. Here, indeed, was my
second direct link. The man had in his possession an historic and
unmistakable casket, which all the world believed to be lost in a
steamer from which no soul had escaped. How I treasured that knowledge!
Three months the man remained in London; during three months he was not
thirty hours out of my sight or knowledge. Day by day when with him, I
consulted such shipping information as I could get; and scored another
mark upon my record when I made sure that no inexplicable story from
the sea was written while he remained ashore. This was perplexing for a
surety. I could not in any way connect the man with the nameless ship,
and yet he knew her crew; he was the one in whose possession the jewels
were; above all, while he was ashore there were no disasters which
could not be set down to ocean peril or the act of God, as the policies
say. This further knowledge held me to him with the magnetic attraction
of a mystery such as I have never known in my life. I resigned my work
for the Government; and henceforth gave myself heart and soul to the
pursuit of the man. I followed him to Paris, to St. Petersburg; I
tracked him through France to Marseilles; I watched him embark, with
three of the ruffians I had seen at Spezia, in his yacht again; and
within a month the yacht was in harbour at Cowes withou