Our difficulties were many and embarrassing. It was not Constantine but we who were liable to be treated as lunatics if we told our story to any self-respecting policeman. Imagination boggles at the picture of the “intelligent officer” when asked to arrest a man on telegnomic information. As it is not my design to treat jocosely a most lamentable chapter of Karl’s biography, I must omit any analysis of the official mind on that topic. After much debate, we decided to deal with the situation ourselves, and collectively. I must insist that this was the elder Grier’s plan. True, I fell in with it, but not without grave foreboding. Your prosperous, hard-headed man of affairs does not lay sufficient stress on the overwhelming power of the primary instincts, and Grier would have scoffed at any theory that in the triangular conflict of positive and negative forces set up by Karl, Maggie, and the Armenian, we had gone back æons in the life-history of humanity. However, I was a party to the scheme, so I must share its responsibility. Karl’s tutor set him free for the requisite twenty-four hours, and we three went to Liverpool to meet the mail steamer. We intended to persuade Constantine to remain in that city a few hours, talk over the whole matter fully and squarely, and point out to him the utter folly of his pursuit of Maggie and his design on Karl’s life. It was so very straightforward and easy when viewed in the “common-sense aspect.” As if muddle-headed saws and statutes would avail against a law of creation! Will you believe it, we two grayheads completely omitted Karl’s sixth sense from our calculations! There were we, full of wise aphorisms and sapient advice, ready to deal with Constantine on the basis of a transaction in wheat, awaiting on the landing-stage the coming of the big steamer, when Karl, whom neither of us had addressed for a minute or two, suddenly attracted our attention by a choking noise. He would have fallen had not his father caught him. His face, usually so cheerfully healthy, wore a distressing pallor, his lips were tremulous, his eyes distended. I knew, too late, what had happened. “Good heavens, Grier!” I whispered, “Karl has seen Constantine on board the ship!” “Yes,” murmured Karl, hoarsely, gazing wildly from one to the other of us. “I saw him, and he saw me. He has just committed suicide! He jumped overboard! His body was caught by the screw! Oh, may the Lord pardon me! I believe I impelled him to it!” CHAPTER XIV CONSTANTINE ENCOUNTERS THE SHARK Some brass-buttoned official of the railway company or harbor authority was near enough to pay heed to our strange behavior. He also caught sufficient of Karl’s excited words to attach some significance to them, though, of course, they must have sounded in his ears like the broken gabble of dementia. Quite civilly (seeing that we bore the tip-giving appearance) the man approached. “Is the young gentleman ill?” he asked. “Can I git him anythink?”