For three days the Press and public were kept in entire ignorance of what had happened during the storm.
Upon the fourth, just as I was beginning to think that all my measures were in vain and that the Pirate Ship had vanished utterly, the Head Office in Whitehall received two long telegrams from the Prefect of Finistère in France and the Chief of Police of Quimper, the old cathedral city in Brittany.
On one of the wild and lonely Breton moors a goat-herd had discovered the wreckage of a large airship. By it was the body of a young man, but only one body. The telegrams urgently asked me to come over at once.
I did so, in my fastest patrol boat. Lying in a wild wilderness of gorse and heather were the remains of the Pirate Ship. It had been destroyed beyond possibility of reconstruction, and destroyed methodically and deliberately while at rest upon the ground. There was no doubt about that. The body I afterwards saw in the Morgue at Quimper was that of Gascoigne. He had not met his death by any accidental means, but had been stabbed in the back.
He must have been dead for quite two days before the goat-herd made his discovery, and of Vargus, living or dead, there was not a trace.
I was back in London again that night, and just as I was going to bed in Half Moon Street the bell of the flat rang. Thumbwood went to the door and announced that Mr. Danjuro wished to see me.
He was in evening dress, and quite his old self again to outward appearances, except that his black hair had turned an iron grey.
For a moment or two we discussed details of the inquest that had been held in camera upon poor Van Adams, arrangements made for the trial of the three surviving pirates, and so on. Then I told him what I had seen at Quimper.
"Mr. Muir Lockhart told me of the telegrams from France," he said. "I called at Whitehall, but you had already started for Quimper, Sir John. I must apologize for such a late call, but I was anxious to hear your news. Now I see my way clear."