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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREFACE OF TIMOTHY McSHANUS, JOURNALIST. It would have been at the Fancy Fair and Fête at Kensington Town Hall that my friend, Dr. Fabos, first met Miss Fordibras. Very well do I recollect that he paid the price of it for the honourable company of the Goldsmith Club. “McShanus,” said he, “if there’s anyone knows his way to a good supper, ’tis yourself and no other. Lead forth to the masquerade, and I follow. Spare no expense, McShanus. Your friends are my friends. I would have this a memorab
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS TELLS OF HER BROTHER’S RETURN TO DEEPDENE HALL IN SUFFOLK. I have been asked to write very shortly what I know of General Fordibras and of my brother’s mysterious departures from England in the summer of the year 1904. God grant that all is well with him, and that these lines will be read by no others than the good friends who have not forgotten me in my affliction! It was, I think, in the December of the previous year that he first met the General in London, as I understo
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS CONTINUES HER NARRATIVE. Ean, I remember, had come in from a little trip to Cambridge about five o’clock in the afternoon. We had tea together, and afterwards he called his servant, Okyada, to the study, and they were closeted there almost until dinner time. In the drawing-room later on, Ean proved to be in the brightest of spirits. He spoke, among other things, of some of his deserted hobbies, and expressed regret that he had given up his yacht. “I’m getting old before my
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
EAN FABOS BEGINS HIS STORY. June 15th, 1904. So to-night my task begins. I am to prove that there is a conspiracy of crime so well organised, so widespread, so amazing in its daring, that the police of all the civilised countries are at present unable either to imagine or to defeat it—I am to do this or pay the supreme penalty of failure, ignominious and irrevocable. I cannot tell you when first it was that some suspicion of the existence of this great republic of thieves and assassins first cam
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAN WITH THE THREE FINGERS. Dr. Fabos continues his Story. I waited three years to meet a man with three fingers, and met him at last in a ball-room at Kensington. Such is the plain account of an event which must divert for the moment the whole current of my life, and, it may be, involve me in consequences so far-reaching and so perilous that I do well to ignore them. Let them be what they may, I am resolved to go on. Horace has told us that it is good to play the fool in season. My own idea
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
A CHALLENGE FROM A WOMAN. Dr. Fabos joins his Yacht “White Wings.” I had given the name of White Wings to my new turbine yacht, and this, I confess, provokes the merriment of mariners both ancient and youthful. We are painted a dirty grey, and have the true torpedo bows—to say nothing of our low-lying stern rounded like a shark’s back and just as formidable to look upon when we begin to make our twenty-five knots. The ship is entirely one after my own heart. I will not deny that an ambition of m
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
MY FRIEND McSHANUS. Dr. Fabos at Dieppe. I thought that I knew no one in Dieppe, but I was wrong, as you shall see; and I had scarcely set foot in the hotel when I ran against no other than Timothy McShanus, the journalist of Fleet Street, and found myself in an instant listening to his odd medley of fact and fancy. For the first time for many years he was in no immediate need of a little loan. “Faith,” says he, “’tis the best thing that ever ye heard. The Lord Mayor of this very place is dancin
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
WE VISIT AFRICA. The Voyage of the “ White Wings. ” “And what, in Truth’s name, brings ye to such a shore as this?” I had been standing to spy out the low African coast, and had forgotten the very existence of Timothy McShanus until he spoke to me. Just, indeed, his question appeared to be. Why had I left Europe, my home, my friends, to visit this desolate No-Man’s-Land, speaking to us as it did of the ultimate desolation and the far kingdoms of solitude? Why had I chosen such a course—and, almo
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
THE NIGHT IS NOT SILENT. The Justification of Dr. Fabos. I dined with McShanus at eight o’clock that night and played a little piquet with him afterwards. He had now been admitted to my confidence, and knew a good deal of that which I surmised. “’Tis your opinion, then,” he had said, “that the men on yonder ship are going to receive the diamonds stolen from the mines of Africa? Man, could ye prove it, ’twould be the sensation of the universe.” I answered by reminding him of the immense value of
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
THE VISION OF THE SHIP. Dr. Fabos Proposes to Visit the Azores. I slept a little about midnight, being convinced that the night had written the last word of its story. The storm had not abated. A wild wind blew tempestuously from the south-east, and drove us before it as a leaf before a winter’s blast. Good ship as my yacht proved to be, she was like many turbined steamers, a wet boat in a gale and no friend to the landsman. We shipped heavy seas persistently, and drove our bull’s nose wildly in
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
DEAD MAN’S RAFT. The Voyage to the Azores and an Episode. So the desire of every man on board the White Wings became that of making the port of Santa Maria without the loss of a single day. When our prudent Captain insisted that we must call at Porto Grande to coal, I believe that we regarded him as guilty of an offence against our earnestness. The fever of the quest had infected the very firemen in the stoke-hold. My men spent the sunny days peering Northward as though the sea would disclose to
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
SANTA MARIA. Dr. Fabos leaves the Yacht “ White Wings. ” You should know that Santa Maria is an island of the Azores group standing at the extreme south-east of the Archipelago and being some thirty-eight square miles in extent. Its harbour, if such it can be called, is at Villa do Porto, where there is a pleasant, if puny, town, and a little colony of prosperous Portuguese merchants. Of anchorage for ships of considerable burden there is none worth speaking of. Those who ship goods to the islan
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAVE IN THE MOUNTAIN. Dr. Fabos Makes Himself Acquainted with the Villa San Jorge. Joan had spoken of a Bluebeard’s cupboard in my bedroom. This I opened the moment I went up to bed. It stood against the outer wall of the room, and plainly led to some apartment or gallery above. The lock of the inner door, I perceived, had a rude contrivance of wires attached to it. A child would have read it for an ancient alarm set there to ring a bell if the door were opened. I laughed at his simplicity,
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
VALENTINE IMROTH. Dr. Fabos Meets the Jew. Imagine a man some five feet six in height, weak and tottering upon crazy knees, and walking laboriously by the aid of a stick. A deep green shade habitually covered protruding and bloodshot eyes, but for the nonce it had been lifted upon a high and cone-shaped forehead, the skin of which bore the scars of ancient wounds and more than one jagged cut. A goat’s beard, long and unkempt and shaggy, depended from a chin as sharp as a wedge; the nose was prom
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ALARM. Dr. Fabos is Made a Prisoner. The Jew seemed unable to utter a sound, but the men who came up out of the cave made the night resound with their horrid cries. What happened to me in that instant of fierce turmoil, of loud alarm, and a coward’s frenzy, I have no clear recollection whatever. It may have been that one of the men struck me, and that I fell—more possibly they dragged me down headlong into the pit, and the press of them alone saved me from serious hurt. The truth of it is im
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
AT VALLEY HOUSE. Joan Fordibras Makes a Confession. A French valet came to me when General Fordibras had gone, and offered both to send to the yacht for any luggage I might need, and also, if I wished it, to have the English doctor, Wilson, up from Villa do Porto, to see me. This also had been the General’s idea; but I had no hurt of last night’s affray beyond a few bruises and an abrasion of the skin where I fell; and I declined the service as politely as might be. As for my luggage, I had take
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NINE DAYS OF SILENCE. Dr. Fabos Comes to Certain Conclusions. We were nine days together at the Valley House without any word or sign from those without. The evil of this conspiracy I found almost less to be condemned than the childish folly of it. There is nothing more remarkable in the story of crime than the senile mistakes of some of its masters—men, shrewd to the point of wonder in all other affairs, but betraying their mental aberration in some one act at which even the very ignorant m
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DOWN TO THE SEA. Dr. Fabos Leaves the Valley House. There was not a sound within the house, nor did an open window upon the landing admit any signal of alarm from the gardens. I could but hazard that the little Jap had crossed the gully of the river and come by such a road into the valley. To question him would have been as absurd as to delay. Here he was, and there stood the open door. When he thrust a revolver into my hand and bade me follow him by the low verandah to the gardens below, I obey
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE MEANTIME. Dr. Fabos Hears the News. We rowed to the yacht without an instant’s delay and made known the good news to the crew. Their cheers must certainly have been heard by half the population of Villa do Porto. Quite convinced that the Jap would fetch me out of the trap, Captain Larry had ordered a supper to be prepared in the cabin, and hardly were we aboard when the corks were popping and the hot meats served. It was touching to witness the good fellows’ delight, expressed in twenty w
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SKIES BETRAY. A Message Comes from the Diamond Ship. I shall carry you next to a scene in the Southern Atlantic, to a day in the month following my escape from the Azores. The morning is a brilliant morning of torrid heat and splendid sunshine. The sea about us is a sea gleaming as a sheeted mirror of the purest silver; a vast, still, silent sea, with a cloudless horizon and a breath as of Southern springtime. The yacht White Wings is changed but little since last you saw her at Villa do Por
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
A PILLAR OF LIGHT. “ White Wings ” Dares a Venture. Merry, our little cockney cook—the aproned humbug pretends to be a Frenchman—swore that night by the shade of Carême that if ever he made a ragoût à la truffe à Perigord again for a master who dined off whisky-and-soda and a cigar, “’e ’oped he would be ’ung on a pot-’ook.” I solaced the good fellow by ordering supper at eleven o’clock, and inviting both Larry and Benson, our engineer, to my table. Needless to say that we had but one topic of c
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CRIMSON ROCKET. Joan Fordibras is Discovered on the Diamond Ship. You are to imagine a still sea and a great four-masted sailing ship drifting upon it at the hazard of a summer breeze. The night is intensely dark, and the sky gives veins of mackerel cloud upon a field of slaty blue. Far away, a ring of silver iridescence, low down upon an open horizon, suggests that great inverted bowl within which all ships are ever prisoned from the first day of their sailing to the last. The monster vesse
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CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
WE DEFY THE ROGUES. And Receive an Ultimatum from Them. It is a human experience, I believe, that men’s faculties often serve them best in moments of grave danger. In my own case, to be sure (but this may be a habit of the mind), I am often mastered by a strange lethargy during the hours of a common day. Events have been no other than a dreamy significance for me. I do not set them in a profitable sequence or take other than a general and an indifferent survey of that which is going on about me.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DAWN. And some Talk of a Ship that Passed in the Night. I have it in my mind that it was just upon the stroke of one o’clock of the morning, or two bells in the middle watch, when this amazing message came to me. Larry and the Irishman were asleep at that time, the third officer keeping the bridge and sending down to summon me to the Marconi instrument. Indefatigable as my friends had been in their energies and zeal, there are limits to human endurance which no prudent master ignores; and to the
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CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE THRASHER AND THE WHALE. We Determine to Harass the Diamond Ship. The steamer, driving on rapidly to the westward, showed her hull very plainly when a quarter of an hour had passed, and was immediately named by Cain, the quartermaster, who was at the wheel, for a collier he had seen some months back at Cardiff. “She flew the Brazilian flag, sir, and carried a Russian skipper what had a picture nose,” said he cheerily enough. “I remember the boys said that someone tattoed a bit of a circus sce
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CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SEVEN DAYS LATER. The Rogues Fall Out. There is much of which my log might speak to tell the history of the seven days which followed upon our resolution. We had pledged ourselves to harass the Diamond Ship by night and day, and bravely had we done so. Incessantly now the messages passed from our deck to hers by way of her flags and instruments. Threats, defiance, insult—to these we became accustomed. A torture of suspense had been superseded by a dull submission to necessity. Joan Fordibras was
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CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DR. FABOS BOARDS THE DIAMOND SHIP. And Learns the Truth There. Our surmise that the rogues would agree presently among themselves and fall upon us for their common satisfaction was not supported by the facts. We breakfasted at our leisure and smoked a full pipe upon it, still unmolested and apparently unobserved. It may be that they had become accustomed to our presence. For seven days and nights now we had harassed them unceasingly. By messages, by gunshots, by our searchlight, had we pursued t
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE STRONG ROOM OF THE OCEAN. Dr. Fabos Fails to Find Joan Fordibras. The boat’s crew laid to their oars with a hearty will, directly I gave them the word; and we shot over the still waters almost with the speed of a steamer’s launch. It was a new experience for me to find myself afloat upon the Atlantic in a small boat, and I confess, even in such fair weather, not wholly a pleasant one. The long rollers, alternately lifting us to prodigious heights and plunging us as to a very abyss of the oce
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CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS. Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross. I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men regarded me in some sense as
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CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXX.
JOAN TELLS HER STORY. And we are Homeward Bound. Mr. Bob Sawyer, I believe, expressed his opinion upon a famous occasion that there was no medicine in all the world half so efficacious or so infallible as rum punch—to which axiom he added the rider that if any man had ever failed to derive benefits from this nectar, it was because he had not taken enough of it. Such a doctrine, for my part, I find incontrovertible. There is no cure for an overdose of cold water so swift and certain as the remedy
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CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE END OF THE DIAMOND SHIP. Dr. Fabos turns his Eyes toward England. I suppose that I slept a few hours at the dead of night; but certainly I was awake again shortly after the sun had risen, and upon the bridge with Larry, as curious a man as any in the southern hemisphere that morning. Remember in what a situation I had left the Diamond Ship, the problems that remained unsolved upon her decks, the distress of her crew, the trials and judgments that awaited them ashore, the sure death prepared
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CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXII.
WE HEAR OF THE JEW AGAIN. Once More in London. I am not one of those who touch the posts by Temple Bar with that rare delight which betrays the true-blue Londoner. Foreign scenes are ever a safer tonic to me than any fret and striving of our own cities; and gladly as I turn to London sometimes, it is rarely that I do not quit her shadows with a greater pleasure. Perhaps I am conscious of a subtle change creeping upon her, and destroying much of her charm. To me she seems as the great growing chi
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MASTER CARD. We Visit Canvey Island. The Jew had written to me, I say, and I had answered his letter. In a few brief sentences, worthy of the man and his story, he put me upon my honour and recited the compact between us. “ To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship. “ At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May.
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