But the more he thought of her, the more he pictured a happy home in which she reigned as a sort of good fairy and guardian angel, the more he felt a strange, undefined sense of fear in connexion with this evening’s adventure. It was such a daring and gigantic deed that it was bound to cause a sensation. It would be in every man’s mouth by-and-by. He would hear of it everywhere. The efforts made to discover the perpetrators would be superhuman. Would he not, as the days went on, and he settled down into the happy life he pictured for himself with Ruth, be constantly reminded of the perils which he ran? He flung his half-smoked cigar away pettishly. He was annoyed with himself for worrying about the future at all. ‘Only let me get safe out of this,’ he thought to himself, and I’ll make a fresh start. This is the last little business Smith and Co. will transact so far as I am concerned. Preene and Brooks and Heckett can take their share and do as they like; Turvey is squared, and daren’t speak for his own sake; and the old Ned Marston will disappear for ever. The phoenix that will rise from his ashes will be a very different person indeed.’ Standing at the pier-head, Edward Marston looked far away over the waves into his future life. His dreams were interrupted by a voice at his elbow. ‘Stand aside there!’ Marston looked up with a start. The harbour officials were busy with ropes and landing-stages. The Ostend packet had crept up and he had not even seen it. In a moment it was alongside. A stream of passengers flowed up the gangways on to the pier, and trickled gently towards the station. Four gentlemen, carrying heavy bags, dropped into the crowd at different points and went up with it, as though they had just come from the boat. In the early morning the Belgian mail from Dover steamed into London and discharged her sleepy freight at the terminus. There the four fellow-travellers separated, each going his own way. Marston was not afraid to trust his companions with the share of the plunder they carried. Without him they would not be able to dispose of it. In its present shape it could only be put on to the market by a capitalist with machinery for its distribution at his command. The distribution and realization of £20,000 of stolen bullion was to be the last official act of the eminent firm of Smith and Co., of which Mr. Edward Marston was the directing genius. In the grey light of the morning Marston let himself into Eden Villa with his latch-key. He went upstairs quietly into his room and disposed of his precious burden, and then crept down again to the dining-room to get some brandy from the chiffonier, for he was tired and faint. In the room on the table he found the letters which had arrived during his absence. He sat down in the easy-chair, opened them and read them. About half-past seven Cherry Ribbons, the housemaid came banging about with brooms, blacklead-brushes, and dust-pans.