"As for the Santa Anna, I knew that every board of the hotel was assured--the landlord would lose nothing, and after I'd kindled the fire I knocked like mad on your door. I fancy, though you didn't know it, it must have been that which first began to rouse you. I didn't give myself much time to get out, after taking off the disguise (which I flatter myself I did pretty well), but I just managed it. I can tell you I was desperate when I walked in here and found you; but now I was never so thankful for anything in the course of my life." "The present question is, then," I said, "whether you will go straight to England with me and tell all you know about Carson Wildred? If we stopped on this side, to prove things step by step as we went, we should labour under two disadvantages. It would mean indefinite delay, and you would get into trouble about that business at the hotel to-night. To sail at once for England, and let matters here take care of themselves for the present, is our only plan, I think. What do you say?" "You are sure that Wildred can't swear my life away?" "As sure as I am that we are both alive at this moment." "Then I'm in your hands. I'll save my sister, and I'll get even with Wildred for making a tool and a dupe of me." "By the time we have landed on the other side," I answered, "there'll still be a clear fortnight to do the first, and I think we may accomplish the latter transaction simultaneously." CHAPTER XXVII Too Late! We had a stormy passage, and arrived at Southampton four-and-twenty hours later than we should have done. It was Cunningham who bought a paper as we got into the train. I was too completely preoccupied to have absorbed a line of news, even had my eyes mechanically perused the printed matter. Cunningham (who was always restless, and could not bear to be left at the mercy of his own thoughts) read incessantly, however, and at the end of half an hour or so handed over his paper to me. "Look at this," he said, with some eagerness, pointing out a paragraph. I glanced at it carelessly at first, but in an instant I was as keen as Cunningham had been. "Another Fortune for a Millionaire," the paragraph was headed, and beneath was set forth the interesting fact that Mr. Carson Wildred, who was shortly to marry Miss Cunningham, the celebrated beauty and heiress, had just heard of a legacy of half a million pounds, left him by an American friend, Mr. Harvey Farnham, lately burned to death in a San Francisco hotel. "So you see it wasn't only the mine, and the money he should have paid for the mine, he wanted," said Cunningham. "Oh, he's a marvellous chap, this Wildred!"