Haggerty started to offer his hand, but the look in the gray eyes
caused him to misdoubt and reconsider the impulse. So Thomas made his
first mistake, which, later on, was to cost him dear. Coconnas shook
hands with Caboche the headsman, and escaped the "question
extraordinary." Truth is, Thomas was not an accomplished liar. He
could lie to the detective, but he could not bring himself to shake
hands on it.

On the way down the plank Haggerty mused: "An' I thought I had a hunch!"

Thomas sighed. "Play your game above board; it pays." Into what a
labyrinth of lies he was wayfaring!

That same night, on the other side of the Atlantic, the ninth Baron of
Dimbledon sailed for America to rehabilitate his fortunes. He did and
he didn't.




CHAPTER VI

Thomas was a busy man up to and long after the hour of sailing. His
cabins were filled with about all the variant species of the race: two
nervous married women with their noisy mismanaged children, three young
men on a lark, and an actress who was paying her husband's expenses and
gladly announced the fact over and through the partitions. Three bells
tingled all day long, and the only thing that saved Thomas from the
"sickbay" was the fact that the bar closed at eleven. And a rough