The result of my inquiries, though by no means unsatisfactory, had, I must confess, put me somewhat out of my reckoning. I had all along been of opinion that Mullen’s hiding-place was on water, as the reader is aware, but I had not supposed he would be so rash as to trust himself on a vessel which, if his connection with the Burgoynes should reach the ears of the police, would be almost the first object of their inquiries. I could only account for his doing so by presuming that he was convinced that the secret of his relationship to Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne--being known only to them and to him--could not by any means come to light, and that, taking one thing with another, he considered it safer to make use of Burgoyne’s boat than to run the risk of purchasing or hiring what he wanted from a stranger. Or it might be that as no fresh outrages had occurred for some time the vigilance of the police had become somewhat relaxed, and that Mullen--knowing it to be so, and that the hue and cry had subsided--felt that his own precautions might be proportionately lessened. Perhaps, too, the ease with which he had hitherto eluded pursuit had tended to make him careless, over-confident, and inclined to underrate the abilities of English detectives. But, whatever his reason, the fact remained that if Gunnell’s story was to be believed--and I saw no cause to doubt it--Mullen had contrived to get possession of the “Odd Trick” by means of a telegram which, though purporting to come from the owner of the boat, Mr. Burgoyne, had in reality been despatched by Mullen himself. That he was the sender of the telegram was evident from some inquiries which I afterwards made at Scarborough. These inquiries I need not here enter upon in detail, but I may mention that I was able by a little diplomacy to get a photograph of the original draft (it is not generally known that the first drafts of telegrams are retained for a considerable time by the postal authorities) and so became possessed of a piece of evidence which might one day prove valuable--a specimen of what was in all probability Mullen’s own handwriting. But as a matter of fact I had good cause, quite apart from the inquiries which I instituted at Scarborough, to feel satisfied that the telegram had been sent by Mullen, or by his instigation, and not by Burgoyne, as I knew by the date of the letter which Mrs. Burgoyne had sent to Mullen--the letter which I had intercepted--that her husband was in Bergen upon the very day on which the telegram from Scarborough had been despatched.