CHAPTER XVII.
Four days later Mark, on his return from dinner, found Philip Cotter sitting in his room waiting for him. They had met on the previous evening, and Cotter had expressed his intention of calling upon him the next day.
“I am here on a matter of business, Thorndyke,” the latter said as they shook hands.
“Of business!” Mark repeated.
“Yes. You might guess for a year, and I don't suppose that you would hit it. It is rather a curious thing. Nearly twenty years ago—”
“I can guess it before you go any further,” Mark exclaimed, leaping up from the seat that he had just taken. “Your people received a box from India.”
“That is so Mark; although how you guessed it I don't know.”
“We have been searching for it for years,” Mark replied. “Our lawyer, Prendergast, wrote to you about that box; at least, he wrote to you asking if you had any property belonging to Colonel Thorndyke, and your people wrote to say they hadn't.”
“Yes, I remember I wrote to him myself. Of course that was before you did me that great service, and I did not know your name, and we had not the name on our books. What is in the box?”
“Jewels worth something like fifty thousand pounds.”