shed and groped in vain. They might as well
have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no
royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the
morrow.

But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater
surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given
his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton
Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was
while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring
headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.

Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it
was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from
headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room,
and, passing in under a red-and-green lamp which burned over the
doorway, met that "surprise."

Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk. The curtains
of his window were drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow was an
unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass. Narkom turned as his visitor
entered and made an open-handed gesture toward something which lay
before him.

"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this?"

Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of
wondering cry. The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light on
the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak, lay a
part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House last
night.

"Narkom! You got him then, got him after all?"

"No, I did not get him. I doubt if any man could, if he chose not to be
found," said Narkom bitterly. "I did not recover these jewels by any act
of my own. He sent them to me; gave them up voluntarily."

"Gave them up? After he had risked so much to get them? God bless my
soul, what a man! Why, there must be quite half here of what he took."

"There is half--an even half. He sent them to-night, and with them this
letter. Look at it, and you will understand why I sent for you and asked
you to come alone."

Sir Horace read:

There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but
knows how to reach it and stir it up.

I have lived a life of crime from my very boyhood because I
couldn't help it, because it appealed to me, because I gl