twelve-thirty noon on May
13th?" he said presently. "Of course, Fullaway wasn't here then. He'd set
off to me at Hull two or three hours before that. He joined me at Hull
soon after two that day. And what I'm wondering is--does he know of that
parcel's arrival here in his absence. Did he ever get it? If he did, why
has he never mentioned it to me? Coming, as it did, from--James!"

"There's a much more important question than that, Mr. Allerdyke," said
Chettle. "This--what was in that parcel?"

Allerdyke started. So far he had been concentrating on the facts given
him by the detective--further he had not yet gone.

"Why!" he asked, a sudden suspicion beginning to dawn on him. "Good
God!--you don't suggest--"

"My belief, Mr. Allerdyke," said Chettle, quietly and emphatically, "is
that the parcel contained the Russian lady's jewels! I do believe it--and
I'll lay anything I'm right, too."

Allerdyke shook his head.

"Nay, nay!" he said incredulously. "I can't think that James would send a
quarter of a million pounds' worth of jewels in a brown paper parcel by
train! Come, now!"

Chettle shook his head, too--but in contradiction, "I've known of much
stranger things than that, Mr. Allerdyke," he said confidently. "Very
much stranger things. Your cousin, according to your account of him, was
an uncommonly sharp man. He was quick at sizing up things and people. He
was the sort--as you've represented him to me--that was what's termed
fertile in resource. Now, I've been theorizing a bit as I came up in the
train; one's got to in my line, you know. Supposing your cousin got an
idea that thieves were on his track?--supposing he himself fancied that
there was danger in that hotel at Hull? What would occur to him but to
get rid of his valuable consignment, as we'll call it? And what
particular danger was there in sending a very ordinary-looking parcel as
he did? The thing's done every day--by train or post every day valuable
parcels of diamonds, for instance, are sent between London and Paris. The
chances of that parcel being lost between Hull and this hotel
were--infinitesimal! I honestly believe, sir, that those jewels were in
that parcel--sent to be safe."

"In that case you'd have thought he'd have wired Fullaway of their
dispatch," said Allerdyke.

"How do we know that he didn't intend to, first thing in the morning?"
asked Chettle. "He probably did intend to--but he wasn't there to do it
in the morning, poor gentle