reams?
Gone--aglimmering. Gone."

That was all.

Impossible? No, just very, very improbable. But how, by its very
improbability, it does take on the semblance of design! See how by
slender a thread the thing hung, how every corner of the plan fitted.
Just one slip Janet Spencer made; she let her thoughts and her words
slip into a groove; she repeated herself. And how unerringly life
had put her finger upon that clew! So reasoned Harber.

Well, if the indictment were true, there was proof to be had in
Barton's leather case!

Harber, having called the doctor, went to his stateroom.

He opened the leather case. Inside a cover of yellow oiled silk he
found first a certificate of deposit for three thousand pounds, and
beneath it a packet of letters.

He unwrapped them.

And, though somehow he had known it without the proof, at the sight
of them something caught at his heart with a clutch that made it
seem to have stopped beating for a long time. For the sprawling
script upon the letters was almost as familiar to him as his own.
Slowly he reached down and took up the topmost letter, drew the thin
shiny sheets from the envelope, fluttered them, dazed, and stared at
the signature:

Yours, my dearest lover, JANET.

Just so had she signed _his_ letters. It _was_ Janet Spencer. Two of
her argosies, each one laden with gold for her, had met in their
courses, had sailed for a little together.

The first reasonable thought that came to Harber, when he was
convinced of the authenticity of the miracle, was that he was
free--free to go after the girl he loved, after Vanessa Simola. I
think that if he could have done it, he'd have turned the steamer
back to the Orient in that moment. The thought that the ship was
plunging eastward through a waste of smashing heavy seas was
maddening, no less!

He didn't want to see Janet or Tawnleytown, again. He did have, he
told me, a fleeting desire to know just how many other ships Janet
might have launched, but it wasn't strong enough to take him to see
her. He sent her the papers and letters by registered mail under an
assumed name.

And then he went to Claridon, Michigan, to learn of her people when
Vanessa might be expected home. They told him she was on her way. So,
fearing to miss her if he went seeking, he settled down there and
stayed until she came. It was seven months of waiting he had ... but
it was worth it in the end.

* * * * *

And t