“But Stanley and I have talked it over, and if you will absolutely and unconditionally promise to sever yourself entirely from your associates, and never again to take part in any political plotting, we will do as you ask and bring the steam yacht to the place you mention, and remain there until you can make an opportunity to join us. We will then take you to America or Australia, or whatever country you think will be safest, will allow you a certain yearly sum which will enable you to begin life over again, and if possible to retrieve your terrible past. I tell you frankly that it is only after days of entreaty that I have got Stanley to consent to this. Had it not been that he knows my life is hanging by a thread, and that for you, my only brother, to be given up to the police by information which came through me would kill me, I believe he would have telegraphed at once to the police after receiving your letter and told them where you could be found. It is right to tell you that the terrible shock I received when I saw the ‘Daily Record,’ and knew that my half-brother was ‘Captain Shannon’ brought on hemorrhage of the lungs afresh, and so badly that my life was at first despaired of.

“But whether I live or die, Stanley has promised me—and you know he never goes back from his word—that if you will accept the conditions we impose he will help you to get out of the country. But he will do nothing until he has received that promise, so send us a line at once.

“And now, James, as it is quite possible that I may die before then and never see you again, I wish to make one last and perhaps dying request. You know how nobly my dear father acted when he found out about you; how, to save our mother’s reputation, he gave out that you were his nephew, whom he intended to adopt as his son. James, for his sake, for my sake, for our dead mother’s sake, promise me that should you be arrested you will never let our connection with you be known. It could do you no good, and it would mean that our mother’s guilty secret would come out, and my innocent children would be disgraced and dishonoured throughout their lives by her shame and your guilt. If you have one spark of natural affection left you will promise me this.—Your broken-hearted sister,

“F.”

CHAPTER XV
A DOCUMENT OF IMPORTANCE

It was a copy, and not the original, of this pitiful letter which I found in the cigar-case, as was evident from the fact that the document was in Green’s handwriting, and to this I attached some importance.

As matters stood it looked as if Green had in some way contrived to intercept Mullen’s correspondence; and it also looked as if, after making himself acquainted with the contents of Mullen’s letters, Green had carefully resealed them and let them go on to the person for whom they were intended. That he must have had some reason for not retaining in his possession what might prove so valuable a piece of evidence was very clear, and after thinking the matter over I came to the following conclusion.

Although Mullen had given an address to which a letter might be sent to him by his sister, it was not likely that he himself was actually to be found at that address. On the contrary, it was more than probable that he had arranged some complicated and roundabout system of reforwarding correspondence, so that even if the police should find out the address to which the letter was sent, they would still have before them the difficult task of tracing the letter to the address to which it had been reforwarded, and perhaps again reforwarded, before they could come to the actual hiding-place of the fugitive, who in the meantime would get wind of what was going on and would promptly decide that it was high time for him to change his quarters. And I felt tolerably sure that his manner of making a change would be like that of certain sea-fowl who, upon the approach of an enemy, dive out of sight beneath the water, where they twist and turn and eventually come up far out of reach and range, and in any other direction than that in which they are looked for.

Hence it was possible that though Green had succeeded, as I say, either in intercepting or obtaining access to Mullen’s correspondence, he might not be any nearer to discovering the criminal’s actual whereabouts. But if Green merely took a copy of this letter and then let it go on to Mullen, the latter would very likely fall into the trap of keeping the appointment which he had made with his sister, and could then be arrested and handed over to justice. For though his sister had—lest the letter should fall into other hands than those for which it was intended—cautiously refrained from mentioning her own or her husband’s name, or from giving any address except that of a foreign town, she had, woman-like, forgotten that there were not likely to be many large steam yachts belonging to an English gentleman, whose wife was in bad health, lying at the same moment off such a place as Stavanger. An experienced inquiry agent like Green would have no difficulty in learning the name of such a vessel and of its owner; and that he had taken steps to obtain the necessary information was very clear from the second document which I found in his cigar-case. Here it is—

Viscount Dungannon,
shot in U. S. A.
in 1881,