re based on a
plum-cake."

"Well, and I've known of worse clues," he rejoined. "But--I wonder?
Now, if only we knew----"

Just then Lorrimore came along, poking his head into the galley. He
suddenly uttered a sharp exclamation and reached an arm to a black
silk cap which hung from a peg on the boarding above the stove.

"That's Wing's!" he said, in emphatic tones. "I saw him make that cap
himself!"

CHAPTER XXV

CLEAR DECKS

The bit of head-gear which Lorrimore had taken down assumed a new
interest; Scarterfield and I gazed at it as if it might speak to us.
Nevertheless the detective when he presently spoke showed some
incredulity.

"That's the sort of cap that any Chinaman wears," he remarked. "It may
have belonged to any of them."

"No!" answered Lorrimore, with emphatic assurance. "That's my man's. I
saw him making it--he's as deft with his fingers, at that sort of
thing, as he is at cooking. And since this cap is his, and as he's not
amongst the lot there on deck, he's the man that you, Middlebrook, saw
escaping in the boat. And since he is that man, I know where he'd be
making."

"Where, then?" demanded Scarterfield.

"To my house!" answered Lorrimore.

Scarterfield showed more doubt.

"I don't think that's likely, doctor," he said. "Presumably, he's got
those jewels on him, and I should say he'd get away from this with the
notion of trusting to his own craft to get unobserved on a train and
lose himself in Newcastle. A Chinaman with valuables on him worth
eighty thousand pounds? Come!"

"You don't know that he's any valuables of any sort on him," retorted
Lorrimore. "That's all supposition. I say that if my man Wing was on
this vessel--as I'm sure he was--he was on it for purposes of his own.
He might be with this felonious lot, but he wouldn't be of them. I
know him!--and I'm off to get on his track. Lay you anything you
like--a thousand to one!--that I find Wing at my house!"

"I'm not taking you, Lorrimore," said I. "I don't mind laying the
same."

Scarterfield looked curiously at the two of us. Apparently, his belief
in Chinese virtue was not great.

"Well," he said. "I'm on his track, anyhow, and I propose to get away
to the beach. There's nothing more we can do here. These naval people
have got this job in charge, now. Let's leave them to it. Yet," he
added, as we left the galley, and with a significant glance at me,
"there is one thing Middlebrook!--wouldn't you like to have