ed as lost in his firm's steamer, _Catalania_;
and that if his company would agree to bear the expense, and to give me
suitable recompense if I succeeded in supporting my conjectures, I
would undertake to bring him the whole history of the nameless ship
within twelve months; and also to give him such knowledge as would
enable him to lay hands on the man called "Captain Black," should this
man prove the criminal I believed him to be. To all which tale he
listened, his searching eye fixing its stare plump upon me, from time
to time; but when I had done, he rang the bell for his clerk, and I
could see that he felt himself in the company of a maniac. So I left
him, and breathed the breath of liberty again as I went back to the
hotel, and told Roderick of the utter and crushing failure waiting upon
the very beginning of the task which Martin Hall had left to me.

Roderick was not at all surprised--it seemed to me rather that he was
glad.

"What did I tell you?" he said, as he sat up on the couch, and took the
tube of his hookah from his mouth; "who will believe such a tale as we
are hawking in the market-place--selling, in fact, to the highest
bidder? If a man came to you with the same account, and with no more
authority to support him than the story of a dead detective--who may
have lost his wits, or may never have had any to lose--would you put
down a shilling to see him through with the business? Pshaw! my dear
old Mark, you, with your long head and that horribly critical eyes of
yours, you wouldn't give him a groat."

"Exactly, I should consider him a dupe or a stark-staring madman; but
the case is different as it stands. I know--I would stake my life on
it--that every word Martin Hall wrote is true, true as my life itself.
I am not so sure that you are convinced, though."

I awaited his answer, but it did not come for many minutes. He had
passed through his momentary enthusiasm and lay at full length upon the
couch, making circles, parabolas, and ellipses of fine white smoke,
while he fixed his gaze upon the frieze of the wall, as if he were
counting the architraves.

"Mark," he said at last, "when we were at Harrow together an aged sage
impressed upon us the meaning of Seneca's line, '_Veritas odit moras_.'
I regard myself at the moment in a position of truth; but whether on
calm reflection I believe the whole of your dead friend's story, I'm
hanged if I know, and therefore"--here he made a long pause and smoked