This building is one of the finest in a city of imposing edifices, and as John Garrison Rayne gazed at it, his busy brain worked with a scheme that, as he had confessed to himself, was decidedly bold, to say the least. “It is the one best bet for me,” he muttered. “It is something that Carter never would suspect, and for that reason I feel sure I can carry it out as smoothly as anything of that kind could be done.” He grinned as he moved away, and the grin was still on his dark face when he reached the obscure house in which he had engaged a room--a house where the people never asked questions so long as the rent was paid promptly. Once in his bedchamber, he locked the door and made sure the window shade was adjusted so that no glimmer of light could show outside. Then he took from his pockets two bags and emptied their contents upon the bed. The bags had contained some of the jewelry stolen from Stephen Reed, including a string of magnificent pearls which he prized more than anything else he had. The pearls had been the property of Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey, and were regarded by experts as unique in their beauty. “If I could only sell those sultan pearls,” thought Rayne, “I should have enough cash to do anything. But I daren’t try to work them off in San Juan. I’ll have to get along the best way I can on the balance of Captain Lawton’s six hundred dollars.” He lighted a cigar--one of the long, slim rolls of tobacco that are so common in Porto Rico--and sat down on the bed to meditate. “I may as well see that the others are all right,” he said, half aloud. “Though, so long as I can feel the package under my clothes, there is no likelihood of anything having happened to them.” He opened the front of his soft shirt and revealed a flat bag, hanging to a string around his neck, and which showed no bulkiness from the outside. He opened the top of this bag and pulled from it a flat package in tissue paper. This he emptied out on the bed, apart from the other jewels. The paper had contained several unset diamonds. He sifted these through his fingers for a few moments, his eyes glittering with avaricious triumph. Then he put them back and fastened the bag. As he buttoned the front of the shirt over it, he muttered: “Eighty thousand dollars, eh? I’m sure I can raise at least a hundred on all these. There are stones worth a great deal more than the price the old man put on them. All I want is to get to some place where I can market them. And that market is New York. Even if I could not turn them into cash there, it is so easy to slip across to Europe. Yes, I must get to New York as quickly as I can. I must.” He restored the Abdul Hamid pearls and the other glittering gewgaws to their two bags and placed them both under the pillow on the bed. “I’ll have a busy, hard day to-morrow,” he told himself, with a grin, as he began to undress. “I must get a good sleep to-night. I wonder whether Carter is still looking for me.”