emarking the name,
address, postmark and special delivery stamp. "Mailed at Hartford,
Connecticut, at nine this morning," he commented.

"Read it," insisted Iff irritably.

Staff withdrew the enclosure: a single sheet of note-paper with a few
words scrawled on one side.

"'I've got her,'" he read aloud. "'She thinks I'm you. Is this
sufficient warning to you to keep out of this game? If not--you know
what to expect.'"

He looked from the note back to Iff. "What does he mean by that?"

"How can I tell? It's a threat, and that's enough for me; he's capable
of anything fiendish enough to amuse him." He shook his clenched fists
impotently above his head. "Oh, if ever again I get within arm's length
of the hound ...!"

"Look here," said Staff; "I'm a good deal in the dark about this
business. You've got to calm yourself and help me out. Now you say Miss
Searle's your daughter; yet you were on the ship together and didn't
recognise one another--at least, so far as I could see."

"You don't see everything," said Iff; "but at that, you're right--she
didn't recognise me. She hasn't for years--seven years, to be exact. It
was seven years ago that she ran away from me and changed her name. And
it was all _his_ doing! I've told you that Ismay has, in his jocular
way, made a practice of casting suspicion on me. Well, the thing got so
bad that he made her believe I was the criminal in the family. So, being
the right sort of a girl, she couldn't live with me any longer and she
just naturally shook me--went to Paris to study singing and fit herself
to earn a living. I followed her, pleaded with her, but she couldn't be
made to understand; so I had to give it up. And that was when I
registered my oath to follow this cur to the four corners of the earth,
if need be, and wait my chance to trip him up, expose him and clear
myself. And now he's finding the going a bit rough, thanks to my
public-spirited endeavours, and he takes this means of tying my hands!"

"I should think," said Staff, "you'd have shot him long before this."

"Precisely," agreed Iff mockingly. "That's just where the
bone-headedness comes in that so endears you to your friends. If I
killed him, where would be my chance to prove I hadn't been guilty of
the crimes he's laid at my door? He's realised that, all along.... I
passed him on deck one night, coming over; it was midnight and we were
alone; the temptation to lay hands on him and drop him overboard was
almo