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126 Baron von Harden, had waylaid him, knocked him senseless, unwrapped the bandage, but somehow (probably in the first instance through the interference of the Brooke girl) had overlooked the document. Subsequently the Brooke girl had found and entrusted it to Lanyard. (No matter why!) He on his part had exerted his utmost inventiveness in hiding it away. Nevertheless it had been discovered and abstracted within an hour.

By whom?

Not improbably by the Brooke girl herself. Repenting her impulsiveness, after leaving Lanyard with the captain, from whom she had doubtless learned the truth about "Monsieur Duchemin," she might well have gone directly to Lanyard's stateroom and hit upon the morphia phial as the likeliest hiding place without delay, thanks to prior acquaintance with the proportions of the paper cylinder.

But why should she have assumed that Lanyard had not disposed of the trust about his person?

Not impossibly the thing had been found by the first officer of the Assyrian, searching by order of the captain—as Lanyard assumed he had.

But, if Mr. Warde had found it, he had not reported his find when telephoning to Captain Osborne; or else the latter had gone to great lengths to mystify Lanyard.

There remained the chance that the paper had been stolen by one of the two German agents—by either without the knowledge of the other.

If Baron von Harden had found it—necessarily before Lanyard returned to the room—he had subsequently been at elaborate pains to conceal his success from both