Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/283

Rh pearl fastenings. When closed the fastening is heart-shaped. Five pearls in fastening.' It is Golden's. Hollo, another of the Marquis's infernal machines seems to be evincing an inclination to go off."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when it did go off; indeed, the whole thirteen had gone off within ten minutes. They had evidently been ingeniously contrived to go off, as rapidly as possible, one after the other, so, as the schoolboys have it, to "keep the pot a-boiling." The room was full of suffocating smoke, Mr. Champnell was drenched with what seemed like sea-water, and he was in the possession of the whole of the missing jewels—they had been vomited forth by the infernal machines.

"Although this looks as if it were a fairy tale," he told himself, "I fancy it has a very simple explanation."

As, some half-hour after, he was driving down Bond Street in a cab, his attention was attracted to an individual who was advancing along the Piccadilly pavement.

"The man himself! So whatever may have become of the Stormy Petrel, milord himself is above water."

Stopping the cab, springing out of it, hastening towards the individual in question, Mr. Champnell accosted him—a tall, willowy man, with a dark, oval face, and big, wild, black eyes.

"I am glad to see, Hardaway, that you've not drowned, in spite of the boisterous weather which has recently prevailed in the Channel. You have probably been kept alive in order to be arrested on a warrant emanating from Scotland Yard."