e affair before my eyes, unfolded it
so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust--everyone's
trust--in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If
they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through as
nobody else could have carried it through.

I told Roger of the two demobilized nephews about whom--if he had
heard--he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a
brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them to Australia years ago when
they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young,
Barlow had worried over news from Australia: his nephews had been in
trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that
was ancient history! The twins had evidently "made good." They had
fought in the war, and had done well. They must have saved money, or
they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast which had
belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however,
that Roger stopped me. _Had_ the boys "saved" money, or--had they got it
in a way less meritorious? Had they needed, for pressing reasons of
their own, to possess that place on the coast? The very question called
up a picture--no, a series of pictures--before my eyes. I saw, or Roger
made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been
worked--_must_ have been worked!--from beginning to end; and how at last
it had most strangely failed. Again, the Fate that had sailed on the
Storm! For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as
the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the
sky framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did
not go to bed (I could not, where _she_ had lain!) and I didn't sleep.
But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head,
and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine,
of how I could return the heirlooms yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim
would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I
thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.

Yes, that was far more important to him even than to me! For the fact
that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim
would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would
therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and--Roger was safe!

The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage throu