She was even able to recall what she had been thinking, as her lips mechanically conveyed the news to Mrs. Ellsworth. She had been wondering how much longer she could go on enduring the monotony, and what Mrs. Ellsworth would do if her slave should stop reading, shriek, and throw the _Morning Post_ in her face. As she pictured to herself the old woman's amazement, followed by rage, she had pronounced the words: SENSATIONAL OCCURRENCE ON BOARD THE S.S. _MONARCHIC_ Even that exciting preface had not recalled her interest from her own affairs. She could remember now the hollow, mechanical sound of her voice in her own ears as she had half-heartedly gone on, tempted to turn the picture of her wild revolt into reality. The paragraph, seemingly forgotten but merely buried under other memories, had told of the disappearance on board the _Monarchic_ of certain pearls and diamonds which were being secretly brought from New York to London by an agent of a great jewellery firm. He had been blamed by the chief officer for not handing the valuables over to the purser. The unfortunate man (who had not advertised the fact that he was an agent for Van Vreck & Co. until he had had to complain of the theft) excused this seeming carelessness by the statement that he had hoped his identity might pass unsuspected. His theory was that safety lay in insignificance. He had engaged a small, cheap cabin for himself alone, taking an assumed name; had pretended to be a schoolmaster on holiday, and had worn the pearls and other things always on his person in a money belt. Even at night he had kept the belt on his body, a revolver under his pillow, and the door of his cabin locked, with an extra patent adjustable lock of his own, invented by a member of the firm he served. It had not seemed probable that he would be recognized, or possible that he could be robbed. Yet one morning he had waked late, with a dull headache and sensation of sickness, to find that his door, though closed, was unfastened, and that all his most valuable possessions were missing from the belt. Some were left, as though the thief had fastidiously made his selection, scorning to trouble himself with anything but the best. The mystery of the affair was increased by the fact that, though the man (Annesley vaguely recalled some odd name, like Jekyll or Jedkill) felt certain he had fastened the door, there was no sign that it had been forced open. His patent detachable lock, however, had disappeared, like the jewels. And despite the sensation of sickness, and pain in the head, there were no symptoms of drugging by chloroform, or any odour of chloroform or other anaesthetic in the room.