He did run the risk, and though his identity was quite unsuspected by the dealer, he found himself compelled to accept half the value of the stone he offered for sale, or go without money. He was naturally a good bargainer, and it stung him to the quick to feel himself outdone. “But what can’t be cured must be endured” is an axiom which sometimes impresses itself painfully upon us all, and as Mr. Hugh Stavanger, alias Paul Torrens, was no exception to the general rule, he found animadversion useless. That evening, after writing a long letter to his father apprising him of both his present and his intended whereabouts, he became a passenger on a steamer bound for Bombay, having booked his passage under the name of Harry Staley, as he considered “Paul Torrens” to be no longer a safe appellation. CHAPTER X. A BRIGHT PAIR. _Letter from MR. STAVANGER to his SON._ (_Written in Cypher._) “My Dear Boy,--For you are my dear boy still, although you have of late caused me a great deal of anxiety. You hardly know how much I endured until I received your letter from Malta, and even then I was tormented by a dread of what it might have been found necessary to do. I allude to the death of the steward, which, to say the least, was very lucky for us. You wonder how I know this? I will tell you later on. There is so much to relate that I must start at the beginning, or I shall get mixed up. First and foremost, the business is steadily recovering from the shock given to it by the abstraction of so much portable property. Secondly, my brother has not the slightest suspicion that there is any reason why Harley Riddell should not stay where he is, and I am beginning to be of his opinion. This belief is inspired in me by a strange sequence of circumstances, all of which seem to point to one conclusion. He must really be a very wicked man, or Providence would not work so persistently against him as it seems to do. Everything that could help him and hurt you is almost miraculously rendered powerless, and everybody whom we had cause to dread has been promptly removed. How, therefore, can anyone doubt that Divine vengeance is exacting atonement for some fearful crime which has not yet been brought to light? This being so, we are nothing less than the instruments used by Providence for its own ends, and I regard what you have done as the involuntary outcome of an inexplicable and unconscious cerebral influence. “But now that the aims of Providence are achieved, I beseech you to assert your own identity and to fight against any impulse to repeat any one of the dangerous proceedings of the past few months.