The Motor Pirate

by G. Sidney Paternoster

"I can't help it," said Forrest. "Perhaps his old tutor really did appear to him. Perhaps Mannering was mad. Who knows? Both are dead. However, he seems to have carried out his intention of not returning to India. Ram Krishna Roy disappeared from that time forth, and Julian Mannering took his place. He seems to have been doing nothing at San Francisco at the time, but a little later he appears to have accepted an appointment as engineer to a mine in Arizona. He left the berth suddenly a few months later, owing to some trouble about the wife of one of the miners. The miner was shot, and his comrades were so incensed that Mannering had to depart hot-foot. Then for awhile I can only guess at his occupation from some newspaper cuttings which he had preserved. These point to his identification with the leader of a gang of desperadoes whose most notable exploit was the successful holding up of a train which had a considerable quantity of specie on board."

"I remember him describing the affair," said Evie, "though he represented himself as on the side of the attacked."

"The only assistance he gave to the plundered was to assist them to a better land by the aid of his gun. He escaped, though, and made his way to Australia, and once again he resumed the practice of his profession,—mining engineering. For three or four years he was engaged at a newly-opened mine in the northern territory of West Australia. But instinct was too strong for him. He must really have had a strong dash of the blood of some of those Indian hill-tribe freebooters in his veins, for he never seems to have been able to resist the prospect of plunder, and the likelihood of having to fight for it seems to have been an additional inducement. Thus, at the mine, under his charge, it was the custom to send, periodically, the gold extracted, under a strong escort, to the nearest town, some forty miles distant. For a long time these consignments were delivered with perfect safety. Then, after a particularly rich vein had been struck, it became necessary to forward a very large consignment of bullion. Contrary to the usual practice, only two men were sent in charge of it. Their dead bodies were afterwards discovered, and the gold was never recovered. No one seems to have had the least suspicion that the gentlemanly engineer at the mine was likely to have had something to do with the business, and when, shortly afterward, he resigned his post and took a passage to Europe, he received the highest possible testimonials from his manager and directors. I have no doubt, myself, that he was the prime mover in the robbery, for his salary was a small one, and directly afterwards he spent six months in Paris, where his expenditure would have been lavish for a millionaire."

"That was where my father met him," remarked Evie. "I remember him expressing surprise at the simplicity of Mannering's life at St. Alban's in view of the luxury with which he had been surrounded when they had met previously."

"Just so," said the detective. "But his Paris career ended as it had commenced. He disappeared suddenly, without a word of farewell to any of his acquaintance, and had it not been for one bit of evidence, I should have had not the slightest idea as to what he had been doing with himself in the interval between that time and his arrival at St. Alban's. You may remember that a scientific expedition was despatched by the Dutch government about six years ago to make some investigations in the interior of New Guinea?"

I shook my head.

"It started six months after Mannering disappeared from Paris, and from the time it left Batavia en route for New Guinea not a word has ever been heard of it."

"You cannot mean to infer that Mannering had anything to do with that?" I asked, incredulously.

"I infer nothing," replied Forrest. "But I do know that a pocketbook, which had belonged to a chemist attached to the exploring party, was one of the documents I found in his bag. The book contained a number of notes upon the liquefaction of gases, and these may very likely have first interested Mannering in the subject. As I have since discovered from a search of the registers at Lloyds that there were quite a number of ships lost about the same time in those seas, I cannot help thinking that our friend had served an apprenticeship under the black flag at sea before taking to land piracy."

"At that rate he must have been the greatest criminal on earth," I declared.