Mr. Gillett looked at him earnestly. "You don't mean--it isn't possible that you knew all the while--?"
The white, aristocratic hand of Lord Ronsdale waved. "Let us start at the beginning."
"True, your Lordship," Mr. Gillett swallowed. "As your lordship is aware, we were fortunate enough in the beginning to find out through our agent in Tasmania that John Steele came to that place in a little trading schooner, the Laura Deane, of Portsmouth; that he had been rescued from a tiny uncharted reef, or isle, on December twenty-first, some three years before. The spot, by longitude and latitude, marks, through an odd coincidence, the place where the Lord Nelson met her fate."
"A coincidence truly," murmured the nobleman. "But at this stage in your reasoning you recalled that all on board were embarked in the ships' boats and reached civilization, except possibly--"
"A few of my charges between decks? True; I remembered that. A bad lot of ugly brutes!" Mr. Gillett paused; Lord Ronsdale raised his head. "The story of John Steele's rescue," went on Mr. Gillett, "as told by himself," significantly, "was well known in Tasmania and not hard to learn. A man of splendid intellect, a lawyer by profession, he had been passenger on a merchant vessel, the Mary Vernon, of Baltimore, United States. This vessel, like the Lord Nelson, had come to grief; after being tossed about, a helpless, water-logged wreck, it had finally been abandoned. All of those in John Steele's boat had perished except him; some had gone mad through thirst and suffering; others had killed their fellows in a frenzy. Being of superb physique, having been through much physical training--" the listener stirred in his chair--"he managed to survive, to reach the little isle, where, according to his story, he remained almost a year."
"A year? Then he set foot in Tasmania about four years after the Lord Nelson went down," observed the nobleman, a curious glitter in his eyes. "Four years after," he repeated, accenting the last word.
"Such were the details gathered in Tasmania," answered the police agent.
"Go on," said Lord Ronsdale. "You subsequently learned with more definiteness the actual circumstances of his rescue?"
"From the mate of the Laura Deane, the schooner that rescued him from the isle, and one of her crew whom I managed to locate at Plymouth, as I have informed your lordship by letter," answered Mr. Gillett. "These men now furnish lodgings to seamen, and incidentally shanghai a few of them for dubious craft! Both of them, the mate and the sailor, recalled the man of fine bearing and education whom they found on the little isle, a sort of Greek statue, half-clothed in rags, so to speak, who made his personality felt at once on these simple, ignorant fellows!" Mr. Gillett paused to look at Lord Ronsdale, seemed waiting for the latter to say something, but the nobleman only leaned forward and pushed at the coals with a poker.
"Which brings to my mind the one point," with emphasis, "that I haven't been able so far to reconcile or to explain. Your lordship, who seems to have divined a great deal, can, perhaps. A man of fine education and bearing, as I said, yet the other had been--"