"Have you never got on his track?"
"Once I thought I had at Singapore, but nothing came of it. No doubt he changed his name. He never asked for, never got, the legacy my poor father left him."
"What was it made you think you had come across him at Singapore?"
"Oh, certain significant things."
"What was he doing?"
Debney looked at his old friend for a moment debatingly, then said quietly: "Slave-dealing, and doing it successfully, under the noses of men-of-war of all nations."
"But you decided it was not he after all?"
"I doubted. If Ted came to that, he would do it in a very big way. It would appeal to him on some grand scale, with real danger and, say, a few scores of thousands of pounds at stake—not unless."
Mostyn lit a cigar, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, regarded the scene before him with genial meditation—the creamy wash of the sea at their feet, the surface of the water like corrugated silver stretching to the farther sky, with that long lane of golden light crossing it to the sun, Alcatras, Angel Island, Saucilito, the rocky fortresses, and the men-of-war in the harbour, on one of which flew the British ensign—the Cormorant, commanded by Debney.
"Poor Ted!" said Mostyn at last; "he might have been anything."