And how should this be, you ask? How might I draw from the shadows a man fearing the light; one for whom the police of five nations were supposed to be seeking—a man who would as soon come to England, you might say, as venture into the jaws of hell? Let the circumstance answer me. I had a letter from the Jew himself three days after Murray assured me that all the talent of Europe could not discover him. Twenty-four hours later one of the fastest steam launches on the River Thames carried me from London Bridge to a house which should give all or deny me all before another dawn had broken. These were the truths, and they need no ornament of mine. I was going to the Jew’s house, and Okyada, my little Jap, alone went with me. Let the circumstance speak, I say, for it is worth a thousand guesses. The greatest criminal alive, as I believed this man to be, had asked me to go to him, and I had answered “yes.” So shall the record stand—even, as it would seem, this surpassing folly—for a woman’s sake, as so much folly and wisdom have been since man’s world began. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MASTER CARD. _We Visit Canvey Island._ The Jew had written to me, I say, and I had answered his letter. In a few brief sentences, worthy of the man and his story, he put me upon my honour and recited the compact between us. “_To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship._ “_At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May. Fear nothing, as I am unafraid. The word is no less sacred to me than to you. I pass it and bid you come._” Whence, then, had this strange letter been delivered, and how had I falsified the fine phrases of the police and communicated with the Jew? The truth shall be told with all the brevity I can command.