Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/258

232 quite see the bearing of this next one. It’s a New York dispatch, perhaps to a London paper, under date of February 18, 1892, and chronicles the loss of the bark Centaur, with all on board, off the coast of Martinique. The Centaur was bound from Marseilles to Fort-de-France with a cargo of wines and muslins. Let us leave it, for a moment, and pass on to the next one, which is the last.

“This is dated Sydney, Australia, October 23, 1896, and relates how a daring scheme to rob the Bank of New South Wales was frustrated by a sailor who had been a member of the gang, but who got frightened and informed the police. The ringleader, a Frenchman, was captured and would receive a term of years in prison. There are four copies of this clipping, which no doubt means that it is the one which Thompson was sometimes in the habit of sending to Tremaine, to remind him of that Australian experience.

“Now, don’t you see, we reconstruct the whole story. Tremaine, starting out as a defaulter and robber, escapes from prison, leaving his partner in the lurch, treacherously, no doubt, since it awakened his violent anger—there isn’t any hatred more vindictive than that of one criminal toward another who has betrayed him. Tremaine finally goes back to France and succeeds in entangling Edith Croydon, then only about sixteen, in a marriage. We know how fascinating he is, and it’s not wonderful that he should be able to mislead an inexperienced girl. Of course what he wants is money, and so she writes to her father. He comes for her and takes her home—no doubt paying