‘I do not pelieve he vill effer die,’ said Mr. Schanck. ‘He is a deffil, and has more lifes dan a cat.’ ‘He had made money,’ mused Lucius, ‘and was coming to England. He is in England at this very moment perhaps, and may claim his daughter, or the girl he called his daughter. It is time that I should solve the mystery of those letters.’ This discovery materially altered the aspect of things. Ferdinand Sivewright living and in England meant danger. Would he leave Cedar House unassailed? Would he fail to discover sooner or later the fact that it contained valuable property? Would he not by some means or other endeavour to possess himself of that property? He would come back to his old father with pretended affection, would act the part of the remorseful prodigal, would cajole Homer Sivewright into forgetfulness or forgiveness of the past, and thus secure the inheritance of his father’s treasures. Then a new idea flashed across Lucius Davoren’s brain. What if this spirit of evil, this relentless villain, were at the bottom of the robbery? He remembered that lithe figure seen so briefly in the glare of the lightning, just such a form as that of the gaunt wanderer in the pine-wood. What more likely than that Ferdinand Sivewright was the thief, and Wincher only the accomplice? The old servant might have been bribed to betray his master by promises of future reward, or by some division of the plunder in the present. ‘In any case, at the worst, I think I have securely shut the door upon this villain now and henceforward,’ thought Lucius. Yet the idea of Ferdinand Sivewright’s possible presence in England filled him with a vague anxiety. It was an infinite relief to feel himself no longer guilty of this man’s death; but it was a new source of trouble to know that he was alive. Of all men, this man was the most to be feared. His presence—were he indeed the man Lucius had seen enter Cedar House after midnight—would account for the poison. That secret staircase might have given him access to his father’s room. Yet how should he, a stranger to the house, know of the secret staircase? Here Lucius was at fault. There was now a new element in that mystery, which had so far baffled his penetration. ‘I will see old Wincher, and try to get the truth out of him,’ he said to himself. ‘If he is, as I now suspect, only an accomplice, he may be willing to inform against his principal.’ After this revelation, so calmly recited by the worthy Schanck, Lucius was eager to be gone. The proprietor of the sea-worthy little dwelling, having said his say, sat placidly contemplating the level Middlesex shore, now wrapped in the mists of evening. He could not sympathise with his friend’s feverish condition. ‘Led us have some subber,’ he remarked presently, as if in that suggestion there was balm for all the ills of life. ‘A gurried rappit vould not pe pad, or a lopster varmed in a zauzeban mit some mateira.’ Even these delicacies offered no temptation to Lucius.