CHAPTER VI

_The Judge States His Third Case_

The waiter rose to his feet and pointed to the fire, which had died down during his recital.

"Perhaps you would be good enough to put some coal on," he said. "You will find plenty in the coal box."

The judge, whose chin was resting on the back of his hand, seemed deep in reflection; but he stirred at the suggestion.

"Are you forgetting yourself? You are the servant here, are you not?"

"Please do not let me insist. If I turned my back to you it is possible that you would have a temptation to do what Connolly was tempted to do to the man called George. It would have regrettable results. But if you do not feel cold----"

The judge put plenty of coal on the fire and returned to his chair. His manner was austere and distant. The waiter had pushed the minute-book in front of the judge's chair and was still standing. Not until the judge resumed his seat did the waiter sit down.

A silence fell on the room, broken only by the crackle of the coal on the fire. The other members of the Clue Club gave no sign of life. They sat or reclined in strange attitudes, heaped in their chairs as dead men.

From the street outside came the sound of singing and music. Christmas waits were heralding the approach of the new day.

"I promised you," said the waiter, "that I should answer your query about Abe Lammie's case when I had related the climax of Jeff S. Connolly's career. I propose to do so right away. First of all, I take it from what you have said that you belong to that school of crime students who believe there is such a thing as a 'born criminal': that, because of certain characteristics, some men and women are natural lawbreakers."

"I certainly believe that there is a criminal class," declared the judge, somberly.

"Precisely. You follow the teachings of Lombroso, who compiled charts to show that these characteristics presented physical traits such as receding foreheads, heavy jaws, and so on. But you may not be aware that at a meeting of students of criminal anthropology at Geneva it was successfully proved that most of the students themselves were not free from such traits. In a word, one has only to observe some of our most respected and most blameless leaders in the Church, in the legal or other professions, to see similar traits. This proves that charts and tables are unreliable guides. You cannot hang a man for his facial expression. Come, do not you see in me some of the facial traits that you yourself possess?"

The judge cast a melancholy look on the waiter but did not answer. He regarded the comparison as excessively impudent.

"If you will not admit what I suggest, then I must be content with my own belief. And you are a judge of the Criminal Court, while I am one who has stood in the dock. Luckily for you, our positions are not reversed!"

The waiter was becoming positively insulting. The judge remained silent. But he was thinking of how he would deal with this man when he came up for judgment!

"Opposed to the theory of Lombroso," went on the waiter, "is the classical school of thought founded, I think, by Beccaria, who held that, though every man had free will, the same punishment would not be just if applied to every case. This meant that while the crimes might be the same, the responsibility was not. These conflicting theories, I fancy, were the cause of the founding of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. The city of Chicago, perhaps appropriately, was the cradle of this organization.

"One result of this classification of crime and its causes has been the inevitable classification of offenses. This has led to confusion indeed. A man may be executed for being accessory to killing another person, but he cannot be hanged for attempting to commit suicide. Cornering the food supplies of a nation so that people die is not illegal; but if a clergyman defies the rubric and substitutes his own form of service, he may be haled before a judge and jury, and severely punished. At one time it was a grave offense to refuse to listen to a sermon on Sunday. At the present time emigration is encouraged by governments where formerly it was illegal. Even now there is no clear distinction between a felony and a misdemeanor, except the vague understanding that the one is a more serious offense than the other."

"Are you reading _me_ a lesson on law?" interposed the judge, sarcastically.

"I am merely pointing to the confusion that exists in the penal code. This confusion exists to a fearful extent in the matter of judgment of death. You know as well as anybody that cases of depravity from the East End of cities are dealt with much more harshly than depravity that comes from the West End. Please do not deny it. There is plenty of proof. But to return to the cases of Lammie and Connolly. The root fact of these two murders, committed by these two men, is that they had their origin in conditions that punishment can never cure."

"You mean that the law can never cure such criminals?" demanded the judge.

"Judgment of death can only obliterate the offenders."

"That is all the law desires to do, for the plain reason that society must be protected. These executions act as deterrents."

"Have you stopped murder since the days of Cain? And yet----"

"You have the wrong end of the argument, my friend. The judgment of death is not only a deterrent; it is necessary for the reason that the law considers the lives of its citizens to be sacred----"

The judge could not continue, owing to the guffaw of derisive laughter with which the waiter interrupted his speech.

"What a legal mind you have, to be sure!" cried the waiter, scornfully. "Why, your law of judgment of death, while it pretends to regard life as sacred, violates its pretense by destroying life!"

The judge made a gesture of dissent, but the Waiter pursued his attack.

"In the case of Abe Lammie, The Mole," he shouted in his earnestness, "society was as much to blame as he. It started him off with every encouragement to develop the very traits in his mental make-up that you declare are criminal traits. _Yet you have the audacity to take his life for being what you expected him to be!_ Is that logical, I ask you?"

"Every man has free will----"

"For a judge you do not show any marked clarity of thought, my lord. You apparently want to stand with a foot in the camp of Lombroso and a foot in the camp of Beccaria. It will not do. I cannot allow such loose thinking. And I am the judge in this room. What is your defense? Do you found it on Lombroso's teachings or on the school of Beccaria? I am waiting."

The judge shifted his position and bit his lip. It was all intolerable; but what could he do? He became irritable.

"I am not here to be cross-examined, or even examined, sir. I am here----"

The waiter's long fingers gripped the handle of the bludgeon used by the barbarian Kartarus.

The judge faltered, coughed, and resumed.

"I am here to conduct my own case as I think fit. We are engaged on a discussion, each giving proof and support to his words by quotations from this minute-book. I say that every man has free will and must abide the result and consequence of his actions."

"Then I take it that you agree with Beccaria. But he argued for grades in responsibility?"

"Never mind what he argued. There is one law and one consequence for those who take life. I do not admit that I subscribe to the conclusions of any theorist. I insist that man has free will."

"Alas! one may insist too much. You must know that there are two forces that govern conduct. A low mentality, urged forward by low hereditary instincts and inclinations, will break into crime sooner than a high mentality influenced by higher considerations. At the same time it is true that temptation plays a powerful hand in all of us. There is a point in everyone that marks the limit of our resistance to external and internal urgings. Society, the social system, made The Mole what he was externally. His heredity largely made him what he was internally. He knew the effect of the contributory causes of his criminal inclinations without being able to diagnose them--gambling, ill-health, drink, unemployment, poverty, and so on. He laid the blame for these conditions on society. The mistake of which the penal code is so often guilty is that it is retaliatory when it ought to be reformatory. Force proves nothing. So long as you continue to believe in the existence of a criminal class you will make criminals; and so long as you make them you will be compelled to kill them. Therefore the penal code had no moral or logical right to make Abe Lammie and to take his life for being what he was. In not a few cases society ought to stand in the dock instead of the prisoner. Therefore I claim and take another point."

The waiter put out his hand and added a third glass to his collection.

"With regard to Jeff S. Connolly," he continued with a kind of bland impertinence, "there was the unreasoning, terrible motive of jealousy at work. When this is allied, or applied, to the sex impulse it becomes irresistible. Is love a species of madness? The divine passion! Even Jehovah, the Jewish tribal God, declared that he had pangs of jealousy. Is not all deep emotion a sort of madness? It is an excess; and excess means lack of balance. In several European countries there never would have been any judgment of death on Connolly. Has not the unwritten law been successfully advocated? That is not to say that Connolly would have been allowed to go free. But tell me, has your lordship's life been so blameless that unruly passion has never overthrown all else?"

The judge started; his hand fell on the table and remained there. He was about to cry out in protest, but the other's voice restrained him.

"What profound truth," cried the waiter, "was in the exclamation of Richard Baxter, the preacher, when he saw a criminal led to his doom--'There, but for the grace of God, go I!'"

The waiter paused impressively.

"Really, it was not much of a triumph for the law to hang Jeff S. Connolly. Hunted and harried, there was no place for him in this world. In a moment of frenzy he had reverted to the primitive and had visited unfaithfulness with death. The penal code retaliated by setting all its machinery in motion that it might inflict a second death. Did the execution of Jeff S. Connolly protect society in the very slightest? Protect? Did his decease alleviate in any degree the anguish of the first death?"

The waiter seemed to be carried away by his own vehemence. His long forefinger pointed accusingly at the judge.

"Fool! Don't you see that here is an answer to those who say, like you, that imprisonment would be no punishment to a murderer? Tortured to extremity, Jeff S. Connolly asked for execution. He desired death as a release. You gave it him as a punishment! Futility of finality!"

Again the waiter's mood changed. He assumed an air of judicial gravity, an air that reminded the judge of his own manner on the Bench.

"I give a verdict against the plea for judgment of death in this case also," he said as he lifted a fourth glass. "Will your lordship please open the next case for the defense?"

The waiter leaned back in his chair.

The judge stroked his chin, a trifle nervously, but thoughtfully.

He was not afraid of this man who seemed to have lost his senses; but he did not wish to arouse any hostility. The truth was that the judge did not know whether to take the waiter seriously or as a preposterous lunatic. A little of the self-assurance of the judge was departing from him, however, and he was smarting under the reproofs he had received. His legal mind, trained to argument, was strongly opposed to surrender. His life was one of domination, in his court he was supreme. Even if this was a crazy man who was baiting him, he was a crazy man with whom the judge was beginning to get really angry.

The judge had been insulted. He had been called a fool. Moreover, the judge felt the advantage of the discussion--the mere logical advantage--slipping from him. He regretted having accepted the challenge of this waiter, but, having accepted it, his self-respect cried aloud to him to smash his opponent by argument.

"May I remind your lordship that time is passing? Have you any other case to offer? You made a remark a moment ago about the judgment of death being a deterrent----"

"As a matter of fact," interrupted the judge, harshly, "I was thinking of that very statement. If I recollect clearly, it was that very declaration that brought forth your contemptuous laughter. You must know the old proverb about he who laughs last. The murder which Nathaniel Gore committed will prove my point that execution is a deterrent. I sentenced Nathaniel Gore to death in spite of a plea of insanity that was ill-advisedly put forward. It was the last time I put on the black cap before going for my long vacation the following morning. Gore was hanged in due course, a man whose vanity brought him to the scaffold."

The judge turned over the leaves of the minute-book, read a few words, and threw back his head as if to sum up to a jury.

THE VAIN MURDERER

One point that I have repeatedly observed about criminals brought before me for sentence [said the judge, ponderously] is not their cleverness in covering up their tracks, but the amazing carelessness they exhibit in providing clues for the police to work on. This subject has on more than one occasion been discussed by the members of this club. To put the matter quite frankly, a great many criminals--indeed, practically all--might just as well leave their names and addresses so that the authorities could call and arrest them at home. This lack of precaution is well known to the police both here and in America.

What is the reason for this seeming indifference to consequences? We have talked it over many times in this very room and we have come to a definite decision. It is that in all these lawbreakers there is an inordinate amount of vanity.

In every class of crime this vanity may be observed, and not least in the crime of murder. Some people are so ill-balanced that they actually invest the murderer with a kind of romanticism that is as false as it is misplaced. As for the murderers themselves, they often exhibit a conceit, even in the dock, that is truly amazing and truly ostentatious folly. The most vain man who ever received sentence at my hand was Nathaniel Gore.

To begin with, Gore was brought into court on a stretcher. He had sustained certain injuries at the time of his capture, and he had the questionable distinction of being the only criminal who was saved from death by drowning and brought to police headquarters by airplane. The whole circumstances of his crime and arrest had a certain amount of pictorial sensationalism that caused the court during his trial to be crowded to overflowing. All this added to his vanity. But the law was not to be moved from its pursuit of justice, and Nathaniel Gore was hanged.

Lord Brougham said once, with his usual acuteness, that the whole machinery of the state ended simply in bringing twelve good men into a box. In no case that I remember was this majestic simplicity of the Law revealed more tersely and directly than in the trial of Gore. The cheap notoriety in which he bathed was a tawdry advertisement for him and was, in the end, completely submerged in the stark unaffectation of the scaffold.

As might be expected, Gore was not a common, petty criminal. He went after glittering prizes, and when the news of the find of a great diamond in the South African fields came to be known it attracted him.

The diamond was not so big as the famous Pitt gem, which was over four hundred carats weight when taken from the ground. It was not so big as the cut and polished Koh-i-noor, which is now in the British Crown and turns the scale at one hundred and six carats. But it was the biggest that had come out of a South African mine for generations.

The illustrated journals printed photographs of the diamond on view in Johannesburg behind barred windows, guarded by a squad of armed police. Then came the information that the diamond was being sent to England. It was this news that made Nathaniel Gore form his resolve.

By diligent and diplomatic inquiry he discovered the name of the ship on which the diamond was being transported, and also the amount of the premium the insurance people demanded during transit from the Cape to Hatton Garden, London's diamond market. When he had found out from the shipping list that the liner had sailed, he realized that he had less than three weeks in which to plan and execute the theft. Once the diamond was landed, it would be so well guarded that no attempt could be made with much hope of success; the place to snatch the diamond was on the high seas.

Nathaniel Gore had not the appearance of a burglar. He was small, and he looked and dressed like a successful man about town. He was known in the West End of London as well as he was known on Fifth Avenue, New York. He had at one time actually been a guest in a house on Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, when he lifted precious stones from a shop in that city and got away with them. He boasted about this. There is no doubt that, in spite of his vanity, he certainly knew gems and their values with uncanny thoroughness. Peculiarly enough, he never bragged about this expert knowledge, the one thing that was his real accomplishment. He seemed to "lift" gems without any more swagger--except in the Chicago case--than an ordinary business man exhibits about his business capacity. He could tell offhand the weight of the Orloff, the Regent, the Florentine, the Hope, and other famous diamonds and could name their owners and their histories.

He had been a convict, which means that he had been cared for by the state. He had been housed, fed, clothed, steam-heated, nourished, and made entirely healthy. But his vanity went everywhere with him. In prison he regarded himself as superior to his fellow prisoners. Out of it he posed as if he were superior to the law and general rules of conduct. He had worked very little in his life, and when asked to make mail-bags during his period of incarceration he protested that the labor would injure his hands. He was therefore sent to the quarry, where his hands suffered considerably more.

But when he returned to freedom he became the same dandy he had been before he was convicted. He had the appearance of an overgrown jockey. In his vanity he employed perfume to add to his conceit. He was a great favorite with women. If they did not love him they certainly had affection for him; as for him, he loved himself too well to spare any for anybody else.

One thing his imprisonment had done for him: it had taught him more than he had ever known about the methods of the police. In court the prosecuting counsel admitted that this was certainly the cleverest crime Gore had ever planned. But then, there was a woman in it, and the probability is that she had a hand in the scheme.

His object, then, after deciding to steal, was to look out for a means of escape. Attack, then take cover. Strike, then run. Assuredly it was a woman's plan. Gore never doubted his ability to take the diamond.

In one way circumstances favored him greatly. The ship was actually bringing the gem nearer to him every day. The diamond was in charge of the purser, locked in a safe in his room. There was no need to search for it. This floating hotel was merely a strong-room, and Gore was able to break open any strong-room. But this moving strong-room, unless he could leave it swiftly, might become a prison wagon.

There was only one port at which the ship called before she arrived at Southampton. This port was Madeira. Gore decided that the coup must be brought off between Madeira and Southampton and as near the latter port as possible. It was at this stage that the necessity for an accomplice became evident.

Gore did not usually work with anyone else, but the circumstances were stronger than his conceit. He might meet the liner at Madeira and take the diamond there; but Madeira was an island from which escape would be difficult. On the other hand, Southampton was well situated for his design. The Solent was not such a broad arm of the sea that it could not be negotiated; and from the Isle of Wight to France was less than a day's, or a night's, journey.

The woman whom we believed aided him was one named Chicago Anne. She was from that city, a blonde of great attraction, one of a fast set not above crime of this kind. But she was wary. She made the plan to a large extent, and then introduced him to an international crook named Archer. Archer was promised a certain portion of the proceeds. The three of them traveled down to Southampton, surveyed the coast, and decided details. Then Archer left with his part of the scheme to carry out. Chicago Anne returned to London with him.

Gore remained in Southampton, where, through a local agent, he booked a passage to Madeira on a sister ship of the incoming liner. She was due to sail the next day and would reach Madeira several days before the other ship arrived there on her homeward run. Under an assumed name a passage was booked homeward by Gore on the ship bearing the diamond.

His luggage consisted of one handbag, and from the moment he stepped on the outgoing liner he concentrated on his job. He kept to the deck during the passage down the Solent. He noted the lights on the shore and the position of the sea beacons. When the Needles were passed and the open sea made the vessel roll he turned to a study of the ship.

There was a large plan of the vessel in the saloon and he examined this carefully. He noted that his cabin--that is, the cabin on his return journey--was situated within easy distance of the purser's room. He became friendly with the stewards, from whom he gained valuable information. He asked for, and obtained, a seat at the purser's table in the dining-room. To this official he made himself affable, and often he visited the purser's room on pretense of getting information about general matters. But he watched and noted.

He took care to acquire a knowledge of the movements of the staff, the routine of the daily work, a detailed outline of the life on board. By the time he reached Madeira he could have told fairly accurately what was being done by the various officers at any hour.

He spent the waiting days on the island; and when the incoming liner arrived he went on board as soon as possible. In twelve hours the voyage to England was resumed and the second stage in the plan to steal the diamond had opened.

The liner had a full complement of passengers. In the smoke-room no secret was made of the fact that the celebrated gem was on board. Some of the passengers had seen it when it was on view in Johannesburg. They described how it had been discovered by a colored worker in the mine and how it had been guarded from that moment. It was being brought to London to be shown to experts before being sent to the cutters in Amsterdam. Its value was put at varying figures, none of which was less than fifty thousand pounds.

"What is its ultimate destination?" asked one of the passengers.

"Nobody knows," was the reply.

Nathaniel Gore smiled. He was the only man who knew!

Off St. Vincent the weather thickened and a stormy crossing of the Bay of Biscay was predicted. The prediction was accurate. By the time they were over the forty-fifth latitude most of the passengers were in their cabins, many in their bunks. There were empty saddles at every table in the dining-saloon.

Gore kept his feet by strength of will, and vanity. He had not been able to get into close touch with the purser of this vessel, owing to the number of people on board; but the bad weather gave him his opportunity. He waited until the ship's bar was closed and then he went to the purser to ask for a dose of brandy. But the purser was not a talkative man. He was civil, but uncommunicative. He did not invite Gore to sit down; but Gore did not retreat. He stood in the cabin, sipping the brandy and watching. He saw the small safe built into the paneling of the wall. That was enough for him.

The Bay was crossed and gradually the passengers returned to the deck. The English Channel was smooth. The liner picked up speed. She passed the Wolf Rock. Land's End loomed up mistily through the haze. The Lizard came into view. The Eddystone Light stood in the sea like a white pillar. Gore rubbed his hands in anticipation. The crisis was approaching.

He was not nervous about it. He never was nervous. He stayed mostly in his cabin until the ship drew well up the Channel. Then her speed slackened. Night came. Gore went down to dinner that evening as usual, and immediately it was over he strolled on deck. He looked ahead, muttering the names of the lights that glittered in the soft, mellow darkness.

"Over there is Bournemouth, then Hengistbury Head, the Needles, St. Catherine's Point---- Ah, there is Anne--and Archer!"

Some distance ahead a light on a masthead swayed against the sky. Chicago Anne and Archer were waiting, as had been planned. Nathaniel Gore calculated the distance quickly. He had received a wireless from Anne and Archer. The moment had arrived. He went down the stairs from the deck.

It was late by this time and practically all the passengers had turned in for the night. But Gore did not go to his berth. He walked along the passage to the purser's room.

The door was closed. He tried the handle. It turned. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind him. The purser was sitting at his table, writing. He looked up.

"Good evening, purser."

"What do you want?"

"Oh, I knew you were writing up your accounts. I dropped in----"

"What do you want?"

The official's hand dropped toward a drawer under his desk.

"I have come to take the diamond," said Nathaniel Gore. "Lift your hand out of that drawer!"

In his own right hand he held a small revolver, the barrel of which was pointed straight at the purser.

The purser did as he was bid.

"I have come to take the diamond," repeated Gore, smiling.

That was all. There was no melodramatic flourish to his speech. He might have been asking for a match to light his cigar.

The purser was an old seaman, cool, quiet, not given to excitability. Most people would have leaped up and been shot. The purser did not show any sign of fear or surprise. He put his hands openly on the desk in front of him and shook his head.

"I did not expect you to come for it with a gun," he said.

"Come, you did not expect me at all!"

"You bet I did. There are two men on this ship after the diamond. One came aboard at Capetown. We know his plans as well as he knows them himself. But you came aboard at Madeira and your real name is Nathaniel Gore. You are a gem-lifter, and until now you have never carried a gun."

It was Gore's turn to be surprised, but he kept his eyes on the purser. "How did you know my name?"

"We have wireless, you know. The liner on which you went out to Madeira had it from Scotland Yard that you probably were aboard. They knew, I expect, that this diamond would tempt you. I don't know any more than that. But we got it from our sister ship as she passed us that you had disembarked at Madeira."

"And the other man?"

"He is on this ship still. He hasn't tried to steal the diamond, for his plans are to get it--if he can--at the docks--and we have taken precautions. He won't take it."

"No," agreed Gore, "he won't. The diamond is in that safe."

"It is."

"So _I'll_ take it."

"I may object."

"You can count yourself out."

"I don't know about that. But in any case there is another factor."

"What is it?"

"The fact that we are at sea."

"Meaning?"

"Even if you took it you could not keep it. You could not land with it."

"You think not?"

"There is also another matter."

"What is it?"

"Listen!"

The sound of hurrying feet on the passage outside burst on their ears. Gore stepped back and slid the heavy bolt home just as somebody shook the handle and demanded entrance.

"That is the skipper and one or two others," explained the purser, shrugging his shoulders.

"You signaled to them?"

"I did with a push-button under the table here. We had the alarm fixed up for daytime. At night a regular burglar alarm is fastened to the door."

"That was very clever."

"I thought you would admit it. You are caught."

"Are you sure?"

"Don't you agree?"

The voices outside grew louder in their demands for entrance. Gore was still smiling.

"No," he said, "I don't agree. Look out of the port."

The purser turned his head and saw lights twinkling straight ahead. About a thousand yards up the Channel a masthead lantern bobbed.

"You see, I have no time to waste," said Gore. "I want the key of the safe."

"The key? Why, man, you are caught like a rat in a trap!"

"Very well, I shall shoot if you don't hand it over."

The purser was about to leap to his feet and resist the threat when Gore shot him squarely between the eyes.

It was deliberate murder, prompted and dictated by vanity.

Nathaniel Gore had never previously carried a gun on a job. He had been, up to this crime, free from violence in his methods. But one of the points in the defense which his counsel put forward at his trial was that the woman, Chicago Anne, had so worked on his natural conceit that he had promised her he would kill rather than fail.

It is possible that she had her own reasons for prevailing on him to take a weapon he had never previously carried. To please a woman a man may do abnormal acts. To make himself a hero in her eyes he may risk his own life--and lose it.

From the moment he fired that fatal shot Nathaniel Gore concentrated with all his skill on the object of his visit. The purser had been marking time, holding him in conversation so that aid would come, believing that Gore would surrender when he heard the officers at the door. But Gore could not now surrender, even if he was willing. He never intended to let himself be taken.

Paying no attention to the noise in the passage, he rummaged in drawers and in the dead man's pockets for the key he wanted. He found it, and opened the safe. There, in a drawer of the safe, was a packet, square in shape and sealed on all sides. He tore off the covering and took a hurried glance inside the morocco case to make sure. The famous African diamond was before his eyes.

It looked like a piece of rough crystal, but Gore had seen uncut stones many times and knew the value of his loot. He pushed the case into his pocket as the first stroke of an ax fell on the panel of the door--an ax wielded by an officer in the passage.

Gore's next movements were rapid. He snapped off the electric light and put his gun into the hand of the dead purser, closing the stiffening fingers over it. He grabbed a life-jacket from under a locker. Without waiting to put it on, he jumped to the porthole just as the bobbing masthead light was passing astern. Then he climbed out.

Being a small man, it was not a very difficult matter. He dropped into the sea, holding the life-jacket; and as he dropped he heard the cabin door give way before the assaults of the officers. But he had beaten them by less than a minute. They had not seen him.

Next instant the sea roared in his ears and he was whirled through a cataract of boiling water.

He was a fair swimmer. As he slid out of the porthole he leaped far out so that he might keep clear of the propellers. He made a few powerful strokes outward as he was swung astern, but he was dragged down into a vortex. When he came to the surface, lungs bursting, he was considerably shaken by the turmoil; but the life-jacket gave him buoyancy and as he gasped for air he saw the liner forging ahead. Beyond the shaking, he was uninjured.

He clung to the life-jacket as he bobbed about on the troubled sea; then, after recovering his breath, he tied the cork jacket in a rough fashion around his body and floated easily. He expected the boat containing Archer and Chicago Anne to bear down in his direction, and he kept his gaze on the masthead light, watching for a flash message from the vessel. To his surprise, the light did not move. No flash came.

He did not doubt that Archer had recognized the ship, for that was part of Archer's job. He and Anne were to hire a large fishing-boat at Cowes, a boat with an auxiliary engine, and come down the Solent and wait for the liner coming up. The spot of contact had been agreed upon. Only that morning he had received a code message to say all was well. The rendezvous was well defined.

Gore swam easily toward the light. The sea was fairly calm. He was not in any danger of sinking, but the water was cold and numbing. The liner from which he had dropped was now far ahead. It had not slackened its speed. All this was very satisfactory to Gore. He chuckled as he pictured the expression of the captain when he entered the purser's room.

Indeed, the actual facts were even more in favor of Gore than he dreamed. The captain and his officers had seen the dead purser, in whose hand was the discharged gun. They had come to the conclusion that the purser had come to his room, had seen the safe rifled, had pressed the alarm, and had shot himself in despair. Not knowing that Gore had gone out of the porthole, they presumed the thief was still aboard and that they would get him at the landing-stage. They were already wirelessing to the shore authorities.

As for Gore, he anticipated that he and his confederates would be on French soil before the police had moved sufficiently to prevent them. The rest was easy.

It was not until he was near the swaying light that Gore realized that this was not the boat he expected to reach. This was a big vessel. She lay high in the water. Not a light showed on her save the one at her masthead and another he could now see at what was either her stern or her stem. Was it possible Archer was on this ship? The single light--that was the signal.

Gore had to get out of the water. He was beginning to feel the drag of his clothes. He was tiring rapidly. He swam desperately for the ship, his mind busy with a false story he could present to her people if Archer were not there. He could leave the getting away to such opportunity as presented itself. For the time being his tale would be that he had fallen overboard from a private yacht.

"Ahoy! Ahoy!"

He hailed repeatedly.

No answering hail came to him. He called again and again. No sound replied to his calls. He toiled laboriously toward her heavy anchor chains and rested until he felt strong enough to climb. He climbed like a cat out of the sea.

By the time he reached the deck he was faint with exhaustion. He stumbled over the bulwarks and shouted once more. Not a soul was to be seen, not a light on the deck. He picked his painful way among the planks. There were holes here and there and what seemed broken gear. The door of the deckhouse was open, swinging on its hinges. He entered, calling for some one to come to him. There was no answer. The truth struck him like a blow. He had swum to a deserted ship, a hulk anchored well out from the shore.

At first he was wild with rage at the mistake, but his anger died down quickly. What was a better hiding-place until the morning, or until Archer came? He sat down and wrung the water from his clothes as best he could, at the same time keeping his eyes on the ocean now and then to pick out Archer's craft. But Archer did not come, though a few ships passed at a distance. Once he thought he saw Archer's boat. It sailed slowly down and turned again. Yes, that was Archer all right, plying up and down for him. But the boat was too far off for Archer to hear his voice. Well, Archer would keep plying up and down until dawn. He had got the message all right. Archer knew him better than conclude that he would drown. No, Nathaniel Gore was not the man to drown with a fortune in his pocket! This was his vanity speaking again.

The small boat passed out of sight and Gore prepared to snatch an hour's sleep. He was very tired and must have rest. He curled himself up in a corner of the deck; but he did not sleep well. In spite of every effort to be warm he remained cold. He went down a companionway and reached a lower deck. He felt his way along, hearing rats running from before his advance. He reached what he thought was the galley. There seemed to be a stove, but he had no matches. But he found a pile of shavings, and he carried several armfuls up to the deck and made a sort of rough bed for himself. He lay down and closed his eyes.

Dawn awoke him with a brightness that cheered him wonderfully. He sat up and gazed about the ship. It puzzled and amused him. It was the strangest vessel he had ever seen. Bags of shavings were piled around the stern. A heap of them lay in the bows. The deck was cracked and broken. The ironwork was red with rust.

The sun came out from behind a cloud and flooded the sea with warm rays. Gore sat on the crazy deck and examined the diamond he had stolen. He was now a rich man, so rich that it intoxicated him to think of it. If only Archer would come now!

A faint droning sound caused him to look toward the land. A headland jutted out in the distance from the main line. He jumped to his feet. That headland! He knew it. There could be no question about that headland. He knew every line of the coast that stretched into the morning mist. He was not facing the rendezvous. He was facing Portland Bill!

How had he come to make such an error in his calculations? He had the ship's speed down to a mathematical fraction. She was due to dock at a certain hour. He had worked it out carefully. He had traced it on a chart; every day so much; every day so much. And then it occurred to him. He had worked out the speed and the distance, but had forgotten to look at the log for corroboration. The storm in the Bay of Biscay had delayed the liner!

His thoughts were interrupted by the droning sound he had heard. It was louder now, like the hum of an automobile. He looked upward. Coming up over the headland he saw several airplanes, rising rapidly against the heavens like wasps. The sun flashed on their wings. He watched them as they came out to sea swiftly--one, two, three, four, five, six--forming an arrow-head shape of remarkable evenness.

Now they flew higher still. They were over him now, droning louder than ever. Battle formation! They hovered for a moment, circled, shut off their engines and swooped. A sudden spark burst from the first plane, and Nathaniel Gore's brain cleared. He leaped to the side of the ship and threw himself over just as a falling bomb hit the deck and exploded in a thunderous roar that shook the world.

Nathaniel Gore just saved his life by that small fraction of time; but he was terribly injured. One of the observers of the planes spotted him as he went overboard. He was picked up and carried ashore. In the hospital they found the diamond in his pocket.

The ship on board which he had climbed, you see, was an old hulk which had been towed out and anchored so that the Air Force might sink her in bombing practice.