“Now, at that very hour Captain Markham was lying helpless in his bedroom, and the question now is, who abstracted the plans from the jewel-case, and then mysteriously handed them to Captain Jutland? Why was it not done openly? Why?—why? and, above all, by whom?——” Chapter IV “Indeed, why?” I retorted, for he had paused, and was peering at me through his bone-rimmed spectacles. “You must have a theory,” I added, as I quietly handed him a beautiful bit of string across the table. “Of course, I have a theory,” he replied placidly; “nay, more, the only explanation of those mysterious events. But for this I must refer you to the scrap of paper found by Jane Mason, and containing the four fragmentary sentences which have puzzled every one, and which Captain Markham always refused to explain. “Do you remember,” he went on, as he began feverishly to construct knot upon knot on that piece of string, “the wreck of the _Ridstow_ some twenty years ago? She was a pleasure boat belonging to Mr. Eyres, the great millionaire financier, and was supposed to have been wrecked in the South Seas, with nearly all hands. Five of her crew, however, were picked up by H.M.S. _Pomona_, on a bit of rocky island to which they had managed to swim. “I looked up the files of the newspapers relating to the rescue of these five shipwrecked mariners, who told a most pitiable tale of the loss of the yacht and their subsequent escape to, and sufferings on the island. Fire had broken out in the hull of the _Ridstow_, and all her crew were drowned, with the exception of three sailors, a Russian friend, or rather secretary, of Mr. Eyres, and a young petty officer named Markham. “You see, the letters stow had given me the clue. Clearly Markham, on receiving the message on the morning of 2nd December, was frightened, and when we analyse the fragments of that message and try to reconstruct the missing fragments, do we not get something like this: “‘If _you lend a hand_ in allowing the _Artemis_ to reach _Port Arthur safely_, and to land her cargo there, I will no longer _hold my tongue_ about the events which occurred on board the _Ridstow_.’ “Clearly the mysterious stranger had a great hold over Captain Markham, for every scrap of evidence, if you think it over, points to his having been _frightened_. Did he not beg the clerk to find some one else to meet Captain Jutland in Portsmouth? He did not wish _to lend a hand_ in allowing the _Artemis_ to reach _Port Arthur safely_. “We must, therefore, take it that on board the _Ridstow_ some such tragedy was enacted as, alas! is not of unfrequent occurrence. The tragedy of a mutiny, a wholesale murder, the robbery of the rich financier, the burning of the yacht. Markham, then barely twenty, was no doubt an unwilling, perhaps passive, accomplice; one can trace the hand of a cunning, daring Russian in the whole of this mysterious tragedy.