“We cannot, of course,” replied the explorer. “But I have not told you all yet. There is an under plot.”
“Indeed!”
“You see, Tucker was no ordinary man. A year previous he and his brother Valentine were prosperous in business in San Francisco. One day, Valentine had trouble with a bookkeeper in his employ and discharged him.
“Albert was a bachelor, but Valentine had a family, a happy wife and small children.
“The bookkeeper, Alden Vance, had threatened Valentine’s life, and the fact was well known that the feeling between them was not of the pleasantest.
“Vance was extremely dissipated, and had for a crony a low-browed ex-gambler, Duncan Crane. Thus matters stood when San Francisco one day was startled with a fearful horror.
“Valentine Tucker, going home from his business late one night, heard an awful cry of human agony from a narrow street near by.
CHAPTER III.
THE VOYAGE BEGUN.
“Valentine Tucker was a man of impulse and never hesitated when he knew that a fellow being was in distress.
“He rushed into the street in time to see one man fall and another skurry away in the gloom.