I assented a little gravely. His news meant very much to me. You must know that, before I landed at Villa do Porto at all, I had entrusted to Timothy and to Captain Larry certain messages which were to be cabled to Europe in the gravest emergency only. These messages would tell Scotland Yard; they would make known to the Government and to the Admiralty, and even more important than these, to the great diamond houses, that which I knew of the Jew, Val Imroth, and of his doings upon the high seas. From this time forth the warships of three nations would be scouring the ocean for such witnesses to my story as only the ocean could betray. If, from one point of view, I welcomed the thought, a shadow already lay upon my satisfaction. For if Imroth were arrested, and with him the man known as General Fordibras, what, then, of Joan and her fortunes? These men, I believed, were capable of any infamy. They might well sacrifice the child to their desire for vengeance upon the man who had discovered them. They might even bring her to the bar of a Court of Justice, charged as an accomplice in these gigantic thefts they had committed so many years. To this end they had put my stolen jewels about her neck, and so baited their devilish trap from the earliest hours. I am convinced now that their ultimate object was murder—when it could be safely done, and when the whole of my story was known to them. “You sent the cables two days ago, Timothy—and what then?” I asked him, not wishing to make too much of it before them. “Have you had any reply from Murray?” Captain Larry intervened, pointing out that the cables had been sent from St. Michael’s.