“Look here!” I interrupted, “communicate with him (if you will permit me to clothe my idea in a vulgar shape) till you are blue in the face.  There is only one person with whom I refuse to allow you to communicate further, and that is myself.  Good morning.”

He could not conceal his rage, disappointment, and surprise; and in the passage (I have no doubt) was shaken by St. Vitus.

I was disgusted by this interview; it struck me hard to be suspected on all hands, and to hear again from this trafficker what I had heard already from Jim’s wife; and yet my strongest impression was different and might rather be described as an impersonal fear.  There was something against nature in the man’s craven impudence; it was as though a lamb had butted me; such daring at the hands of such a dastard, implied unchangeable resolve, a great pressure of necessity, and powerful means.  I thought of the unknown Carthew, and it sickened me to see this ferret on his trail.

Upon inquiry I found the lawyer was but just disbarred for some malpractice; and the discovery added excessively to my disquiet.  Here was a rascal without money or the means of making it, thrust out of the doors of his own trade, publicly shamed, and doubtless in a deuce of a bad temper with the universe.  Here, on the other hand, was a man with a secret; rich, terrified, practically in hiding; who had been willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the bones of the Flying Scud.  I slipped insensibly into a mental alliance with the victim; the business weighed on me; all day long, I was wondering how much the lawyer knew, how much he guessed, and when he would open his attack.

Some of these problems are unsolved to this day; others were soon made clear.  Where he got Carthew’s name is still a mystery; perhaps some sailor on the Tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a tool; but I was actually at his elbow when he learned the address.  It fell so.  One evening, when I had an engagement and was killing time until the hour, I chanced to walk in the court of the hotel while the band played.  The place was bright as day with the electric light; and I recognised, at some distance among the loiterers, the person of Bellairs in talk with a gentleman whose face appeared familiar.  It was certainly some one I had seen, and seen recently; but who or where, I knew not.  A porter standing hard by, gave me the necessary hint.  The stranger was an English navy man, invalided home from Honolulu, where he had left his ship; indeed, it was only from the change of clothes and the effects of sickness, that I had not immediately recognised my friend and correspondent, Lieutenant Sebright.

The conjunction of these planets seeming ominous, I drew near; but it seemed Bellairs had done his business; he vanished in the crowd, and I found my officer alone.

“Do you know whom you have been talking to, Mr. Sebright?” I began.

“No,” said he; “I don’t know him from Adam.  Anything wrong?”