"For me?" said Jimmy. "I've backed nothing to-day. Been too busy."
He tore upon the envelope, read the message, and after a pause handed it to me, whistling softly. It had been handed in at the Docks Station, Liverpool, and it ran—
"Tell O. that F. and I sail to-night New York S.S. Emania.
"Foe."
NIGHT THE TWELFTH.
THE "EMANIA".
I am going to spin the next stretch of this yarn—and maybe the next after it—in my own way. You will wonder how I happened by certain scraps of information: but you will understand before we come to the end.
It comes mainly from later report, but partly from documents which I have been too busy, of late, to sift. Here they are, all mixed: and I choose one only out of the heap—and that a passage which doesn't help the actual story much, though it may help the understanding of it. It occurs in a letter of Foe's written at sea and posted from New York—
"She had been reading a magazine, borrowed from the ship's library, and when she left me, she left it lying beside her deck-chair. The wind ruffled its pages and threatened to tear them: so I picked the thing up, and was about to close it, and to stow it behind her cushion, when a story-title caught my eye and agreeably whetted my curiosity. It was 'The Head Hunter.'