‘Do you remember the name of the ship—or steamer—in which he went?’ ‘That’s a curious question; however, I don’t mind answering it. He went in a Spanish sailing-ship, El Dorado, bound for Rio.’ This was all—a poor clue wherewith to discover the whereabouts of a man who had been missing twelve years. CHAPTER XII. LUCIUS HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH A FAMOUS PERSONAGE. It is one thing for a man to make a rash promise, but another thing for him to keep it. A man in love will pledge himself to any enterprise—to any adventure—even to the discovery of a new planet or a new continent, should his mistress demand as much. After contemplating the question from every possible point of view, Lucius Davoren was disposed to think that he had pledged himself to the performance of something that was more impossible than astronomical or geographical discovery, when he promised to find Lucille Sivewright’s father, or, failing that, obtain for her at least the story of his fate. It had seemed a great point to get the old man to speak freely of his lost son; but even with this new light thrown upon the business, an Egyptian darkness still surrounded the figure of the missing man. He had sailed for a certain port. He might be still a denizen of that Southern city. Yet what less likely in such a man’s career than continued residence anywhere? The criminal is naturally a wanderer. He has no fixed abiding-place. Fresh woods and pastures new are the necessity of his contraband existence. Like a smuggled keg of cognac, he passes from place to place under a cloud of mystery. None see him arrive or depart. Like the chameleon, he changes colour—now wearing dyed whiskers and a wig, now returning to the hues of nature. He has as many names as the Roman Jupiter. Had Lucius been a free man, he might have gone straight to Rio, and hunted up the traces of the missing man, unaided and alone. He might have discovered some clue even after the lapse of years since the sailing of the Spanish merchantman El Dorado. It was just within the limits of possibility that he might have found the man himself. But to do this would have involved the abandonment of much that was of vital moment to himself—would have indeed thrown the whole scheme of his existence out of gear. In the first place he was poor, and his pitiful salary as parish doctor was of inestimable value to him. Now, a parish doctor has no more liberty to rove than the parish turncock, and vast would be the wonder of the vestry—or the overseers—if informed that the parish surgeon had gone for a fortnight’s grouse shooting on the Sutherland hills, or set sail for the Mediterranean in a friend’s yacht, or joined one of the great Cook’s caravans bound for Egypt or Peru.