"Well," he said, with a queer deliberation. "Some men in my position would have thought nothing about putting bullets through both of you when we met this afternoon--you hit on our secret. But I'm not that sort--I treat you as what you are, a gentlewoman and a gentleman, and no harm whatever shall come to you. Therefore, I feel certain that all I've said and am saying to you will be treated as it ought to be--by you. I daresay you think I'm an awful scoundrel, but I told you I was an Ishmael--and I certainly haven't got the slightest compunction about appropriating the stuff in those chests on deck--one of the Forestburnes stole it from the monks--why shouldn't I steal it from his successor? It's as much mine as his--perhaps more so, for one of my ancestors, a certain Geoffrey de Knaytheville, was at one time Lord Abbot of the very house that the Forestburnes stole that stuff from! I reckon I've a prior claim, Middlebrook?" "I should imagine," I answered, guardedly, "that it would be very difficult for anybody to substantiate a claim to ecclesiastical property--of that particular nature--which disappeared in the sixteenth century. What is certain, however, is that you've got it. Take my advice--hand it over to the authorities!" He looked at me in blank astonishment for a moment; then laughed as a man laughs who is suddenly confronted by a good joke. "Hah! hah! hah!" he let out at the top of his voice. "Good! you're a born humorist, friend Middlebrook!" He pushed the claret nearer. "Fill your glass again! Hand it over to the authorities? Why, that would merit a full-page cartoon in the next number of _Punch_. Good, good! but," he went on, suddenly becoming grave again, "we were talking of those scoundrelly Quicks. Of course we--that is, my French friend and I--have been, and are, suspected of murdering them?" "I think that is so," I answered. "Well, that's a very easy point to settle, if it should ever come to it," he replied. "And I'll settle it, for your edification, just now. Noah and Salter Quick were done to death, one near Saltash, in Cornwall, the other near Alnwick, in Northumberland, several hundreds of miles apart, about the same hour of the same evening. Now, my friend and I, so far from being anywhere near either Saltash or Alnwick on that particular evening and night, spent them together at the North Eastern Railway Hotel at York. I went there that afternoon from London; he joined me from Berwick. We met at the hotel about six o'clock; we dined in the hotel; we played billiards in the hotel; we slept in the hotel; we breakfasted in the hotel; the hotel folks will remember us well, and our particulars are duly registered in their books on the date in question. We had no hand whatever in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick, and I give you my word of honour--being under the firm impression that though I am a pirate, I am still a gentleman--that neither of us have the very slightest notion who had!"