is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true
account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you
do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the
poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached
the room."

"That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw
him grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through
the window. It fairly shook me, sir. I'd have half killed Tonga for
it if he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his
club, and some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say
helped to put you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than
I can tell. I don't feel no malice against you for it. But it does
seem a queer thing," he added, with a bitter smile, "that I who have a
fair claim to nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first
half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to
spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day
for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do
with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet
upon the man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto
it brought fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life."

At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders
into the tiny cabin. "Quite a family party," he remarked. "I think I
shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all
congratulate each other. Pity we didn't take the other alive; but
there was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it
rather fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her."

"All is well that ends well," said Holmes. "But I certainly did not
know that the Aurora was such a clipper."

"Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that
if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never
have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business."

"Neither he did," cried our prisoner,--"not a word. I chose his launch
because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing, but we paid
him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our
vessel, the Esmeralda, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils."

"Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him.
If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are