"No, the American; and it was only the intervention of the United States
which prevented serious international trouble. Out of the affair came
Ted a shipwreck."

"Have you never got on his track?"

"Once I thought I had at Singapore, but nothing came of it. No doubt he
changed his name. He never asked for, never got, the legacy my poor
father left him."

"What was it made you think you had come across him at Singapore?"

"Oh, certain significant things."

"What was he doing?"

Debney looked at his old friend for a moment debatingly, then said
quietly: "Slave-dealing, and doing it successfully, under the noses of
men-of-war of all nations."

"But you decided it was not he after all?"

"I doubted. If Ted came to that, he would do it in a very big way. It
would appeal to him on some grand scale, with real danger and, say, a few
scores of thousands of pounds at stake--not unless."

Mostyn lit a cigar, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, regarded
the scene before him with genial meditation--the creamy wash of the sea
at their feet, the surface of the water like corrugated silver stretching
to the farther sky, with that long lane of golden light crossing it to