unfolding, but he was summing things up in quite judicial fashion, and there was a certain amount of intellectual satisfaction in listening to a succinct résumé. One of us, at any rate, was following him with rapt attention—Miss Raven. I fancied I saw why—Baxter, or Netherfield, had already presented himself to her as a personage of a dark and romantic, if deeply-wicked and even blood-stained sort.
"Now," continued Lorrimore, becoming more judicial than ever, "according to the official accounts, as shown at Lloyds, the Elizabeth Robinson never reached Chemulpo, and she is—officially—believed to have been lost, with all hands, during a typhoon, in the Yellow Sea. All hands! But we know that, whatever happened to the Elizabeth Robinson, and to the rest of the crew, certain men who were on board her when she left Hong-Kong, for Chemulpo, did escape whatever catastrophe occurred. The Elizabeth Robinson may be at the bottom of the Yellow Sea, and most of her folk with her. But in course of time Noah Quick turns up at Devonport in England, in possession, evidently, of plenty of money. He takes a licensed house, runs it on highly respectable lines, and comports himself as a decent member of society; also he prospers, and has a very good balance at his bankers. So there is one man who certainly did not go down with the Elizabeth Robinson. And now—to keep matters in chronological order—we hear of another. A Chinaman, undoubtedly Lo Chuh Fen, turns up at Lloyds and endeavours to find out if this Elizabeth Robinson ever did reach Chemulpo. There is a strange point here—Lo Chuh Fen certainly sailed out of Hong-Kong with the Elizabeth Robinson, bound
