"I'll get some honest sleep to-night," he said as they parted, and ten
minutes afterwards he was lying under his mosquito-curtains, oblivious
to the world.

Coryndon's servant, Shiraz, was squatting across the door that led into
the veranda when his master came in, and he waited for his orders. He
would have sat anywhere for weeks, and had done so, to await the
doubtful coming of Coryndon, whose times and seasons no man knew.

When he was gone, Coryndon took out the bulky packet of notes and
extracted the piece of rag, which he locked carefully away in a
dispatch-box. He then cleared a little space on the floor, and put the
papers lightly over one another. Setting a match to them, he watched
them light up and curl into brittle tinder, and dissolve from that stage
into a heap of charred ashes, which he gathered up with a careful hand
and put into the soft earth of a fern-box outside his veranda door. This
being done, he sat down and began to think steadily, letting the names
drift through his brain, one by one, until they sorted themselves, and
he felt for the most useful name to take first.

"Joicey, the Banker, is a man of no importance," he murmured to himself,
and again he said, "Joicey the Banker."

It was nearly dawn when he got between the cool linen sheets, and was
asleep almost as his dark head lay back against the soft white pillow.