up the Gigantic Smuggling Conspiracy.

At that instant the man dropped the magazine and looked Cleggett full
in the face. He waved his arm in a meaning gesture in the direction in
which Loge had disappeared and said, with a gentle shake of his head at
Cleggett, as if he were chiding a naughty child:

"When thieves fall out--! When thieves fall out, my dear sir!"

As he swept by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man
who has delivered himself of a brilliant epigram; it showed in his very
shoulders.

"And that," murmured Cleggett, "is Wilton Barnstable, the great
detective!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE SOUL OF LOGAN BLACK

Wilton Barnstable, the great detective, having witnessed Loge's
outburst of wrath, had thought it signified a quarrel between thieves,
as his words to Cleggett indicated. He had thought Cleggett a crook,
and Loge's ally.

Loge, on the other hand, had thought Cleggett a detective. He had
addressed him as "Mr. Detective" that morning at Morris's. Loge
believed the Jasper B. and the Annabel Lee to be allied against him.

Whereas Cleggett, until he had recognized Wilton Barnstable in the
boat, had thought it likely that the Annabel Lee and Morris's were
allied against the Jasper B.

Now that Cleggett knew the commander of the Annabel Lee to be Wilton
Barnstable, his first impulse was to go to the Great Detective and
invite his cooperation against Loge and the gang at Morris's. But
almost instantly he reflected that he could not do this. For there was
the box of Reginald Maltravers! Indeed, how did he know that it was
not the box of Reginald Maltravers which had brought the Great
Detective to that vicinity? This man--of world-wide fame, and reputed
to possess an almost miraculous instinct in the unraveling of criminal
mysteries--might be even now on the trail of Lady Agatha. If so, he
was Cleggett's enemy. When it came to a choice between the championship
of Lady Agatha and the defiance of Wilton Barnstable, and all that he
represented, Cleggett did not hesitate for an instant.

There were still some aspects of the situation in which he found
himself that were as puzzling as ever to Cleggett. It is true that he
now knew why Loge's men had been in the hold of the vessel; they had
been there, no doubt, in an attempt to get possession of the oblong,
unpainted box which had caused Loge's explosion of wrath; the box which
was the real thing Loge had tried to buy from Cleggett whe