“You are right, sir,” said Jenkins, ensconcing himself comfortably on the seat pointed out to him, and basking in the warmth of the comfortable fire. “Mr. Stavanger had hardly reached Boulogne, when he developed symptoms of serious illness, and both doctor and nurses were speedily in requisition. Mrs. Stavanger pleaded indisposition on her own account, and declined to immure herself in a sick room. Hence her husband was entirely given up to strangers, for the little girl was of no use as a nurse. One of the women who has been engaged for this office is an Englishwoman, and she has proved singularly amenable to pecuniary persuasions. In a conversation which I secured with her yesterday, she gave me some extraordinary information. Mr. Stavanger’s ailment, it appears, is brain fever, and his whole thoughts are centred upon various events connected with, and subsequent to, the diamond robbery. He raves incessantly of his son, and of all the trouble he has brought upon him. These ravings I have tried to arrange in their chronological order, and, always premising that they are not the mere phantoms of a diseased brain, I conclude them to reveal the following facts: Mr. Stavanger became convinced of his son’s guilt, some time not long before Mr. Riddell’s committal. Certain indiscretions on the part of Hugh Stavanger caused others beside his father to learn of his guilt. One of these others was a servant named Wear, who at once proceeded to blackmail the family on the strength of her knowledge. This woman died very suddenly, and Mr. Stavanger has been haunted by a belief that his son compassed her death. You, I know, had an idea that the old gentleman himself had a hand in the affair. But whatever may be attributed to the son, I feel sure that the father was not to blame in this respect. Yet he was quite prepared to go to great lengths to shield his scapegrace son, and knowing him to be a thief, and suspecting him to be a murderer, he aided his escape from England in the ss. ‘Merry Maid.’ While staying at St. Ives, several weeks after this, he had an extraordinary find in the shape of a sealed bottle, containing papers. These papers appear to have been written and signed by Mr. Hilton Riddell, on board the ‘Merry Maid,’ before being sealed in the bottle and thrown into the sea. Their purport was a complete description of all that had taken place on board the vessel since it had sailed from London, and they evidently contained proof enough of Hugh Stavanger’s guilt. If such a bottle was really cast into the sea, it was a very strange chance that threw it into the hands of the only man besides those denounced in it who could have a great personal interest in suppressing and destroying its contents.”