e!"

"Then you don't still think it too remarkable to sell?"

"We might take a fishery and haul it up with smaller fry. It would
come after months of ill luck, just as we were going to sell the
schooner; by Jove, it would be the talk of the Pacific!"

"Well, we've got to get it first. Is this von What's-his-name a
formidable cuss?"

"More so than he looks; and he has the cheek of the devil!"

As he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the open state-room
door, and I caught a glimpse of an upturned moustache beyond.

"But is he the chap we have to deal with? Won't the pearl be in the
purser's keeping?"

Raffles stood at the door, frowning out upon the Solent, but for an
instant he turned to me with a sniff.

"My good fellow, do you suppose the whole ship's company knows there's
a gem like that aboard? You said that it was worth a hundred thousand
pounds; in Berlin they say it's priceless. I doubt if the skipper
himself knows that von Heumann has it on him."

"And he has?"

"Must have."

"Then we have only him to deal with?"

He answered me without a word. Something white was fluttering past
once more, and Raffles, stepping forth, made the promenaders three.

II

I do not ask to set foot aboard a finer steamship than the Uhlan of the
Norddeutscher Lloyd, to meet a kindlier gentleman than her commander,
or better fellows than his officers. This much at least let me have
the grace to admit. I hated the voyage. It was no fault of anybody
connected with the ship; it was no fault of the weather, which was
monotonously ideal. Not even in my own heart did the reason reside;
conscience and I were divorced at last, and the decree made absolute.
With my scruples had fled all fear, and I was ready to revel between
bright skies and sparkling sea with the light-hearted detachment of
Raffles himself. It was Raffles himself who prevented me, but not
Raffles alone. It was Raffles and that Colonial minx on her way home
from school.

What he could see in her--but that begs the question. Of course he saw
no more than I did, but to annoy me, or perhaps to punish me for my
long defection, he must turn his back on me and devote himself to this
chit from Southampton to the Mediterranean. They were always together.
It was too absurd. After breakfast they would begin, and go on until
eleven or twelve at night; there was no intervening hour at which you
might not hear her nasal laugh, or his quiet voice talk