manner, but again the
magic card produced a soothing effect.

"I am rather rattled," said the Governor. "One of my men has got away. I
suppose you know that?"

"And I am afraid another of your men is going away, sir," said T. X.,
who had a curious reverence for military authority. He produced his
paper and laid it on the governor's table.

"This is an order for the release of John Lexman, convicted under
sentence of fifteen years penal servitude."

The Governor looked at it.

"Dated last night," he said, and breathed a long sigh of relief. "Thank
the Lord!--that is the man who escaped!"

CHAPTER VIII

Two years after the events just described, T. X. journeying up to London
from Bath was attracted by a paragraph in the Morning Post. It told him
briefly that Mr. Remington Kara, the influential leader of the Greek
Colony, had been the guest of honor at a dinner of the Hellenic Society.

T. X. had only seen Kara for a brief space of time following that
tragic morning, when he had discovered not only that his best friend had
escaped from Dartmoor prison and disappeared, as it were, from the world
at a moment when his pardon had been signed, but that that friend's wife
had also vanished from the face of the earth.

At the same time--it might, as even T. X. admitted, have been the
veriest coincidence that Kara had also cleared out of London to reappear
at the end of six months. Any question addressed to him, concerning the
whereabouts of the two unhappy people, was met with a bland expression
of ignorance as to their whereabouts.

John Lexman was somewhere in the world, hiding as he believed from
justice, and with him was his wife. T. X. had no doubt in his mind as to
this solution of the puzzle. He had caused to be published the story
of the pardon and the circumstances under which that pardon had been
secured, and he had, moreover, arranged for an advertisement to be
inserted in the principal papers of every European country.

It was a moot question amongst the departmental lawyers as to whether
John Lexman was not guilty of a technical and punishable offence for
prison breaking, but this possibility did not keep T. X. awake at
nights. The circumstances of the escape had been carefully examined. The
warder responsible had been discharged from the service, and had almost
immediately purchased for himself a beer house in Falmouth, for a sum
which left no doubt in the official mind that he had been the reci