te; to-day we do not know where. The probability is that he will
come to fetch you at seven o'clock--I have frightened it all out of the
people down-stairs--if he does, you will go with him. Otherwise, he's
pretty sure to send someone for you, and, as you at the moment are our
sole link between that unmitigated scoundrel and his arrest, I ask you
to risk one step more, and return at any rate as far as the coast, that
we may follow him for the last time. You'll do that for us?"

I looked at his card, whereon was the inscription, "Detective-Inspector
King, Scotland Yard"; and I said at once--

"I shall not only go to the coast, but to his tender, for I've given my
word. What you may do in the meantime is not my affair; but----"

"Yes," he said eagerly, craning his neck again, "'for God's sake keep
your eye on me,' that's what you were going to say. Well, we shall do
it. We owe it to you that we've got any clue to the man, and you're not
likely to lose anything from the Government by what you've done."

"I suppose he's made a sensation?" I asked, in simplicity, and he
looked as a man who has yesterday's news.

"Sensation! There's been no such stir since the French war. There isn't
another subject talked of in any house in Europe--but, read that; and
whatever you do, don't make a sign until we give you the cue. It's not
safe for me to stay here; he may return any minute. I wish you luck of
it; and it's ten thousand in my pocket, any way!"

Detective-Inspector King went as he had come, craning his neck and
passing noiselessly over the leads; but he left me a newspaper, wherein
there was column after column concerning the robbery of the _Bellonic_,
and a dish worthy of all journalistic sensation-mongering. I read this
with avidity; with sharp appetite for the extraordinary hope which had
come so curiously into my life. At last, the police were on the trail
of Captain Black; yet I saw at once that, lacking my help, he would
elude them. It was strange that, after all, I, who had seemed to fail
so hopelessly in my enterprise, should at last bring this giant in
crime to justice. For, if he had not burdened himself with me, he would
then have left in the tender, and, once on the nameless ship, would
have defied the world. But now they watched him; and from the solitude
of my imprisonment I seemed to be lifted in a moment to a joyous state
of expectation and excitement.

It was then about three o'clock in the afternoon. I hea