spiracy, having me for its victim. Oh, my girlie! my poor little girlie! what have I brought you to through my obstinacy!"
Seeing the old man in this state very nearly broke me down, but I mastered myself with an effort and addressed a question to the unfortunate coachman: "Pull yourself together, Thompson, and try and tell me straightforwardly, and as correctly as you can, what this friend of yours was like?"
I fully expected to hear him give an exact description of the man who had followed us from Melbourne, but I was mistaken.
"I don't know, sir," said Thompson, "as I could rightly tell you, my mind being still a bit dizzy-like. He was tall, but not by any manner of means big made; he had very small 'ands an' feet, a sort o' what they call death's-'ead complexion; 'is 'air was black as soot, an' so was 'is eyes, an' they sparkled like two diamonds in 'is 'ead."
"Do you remember noticing if he had a curious gold ring on his little finger, like a snake?"
"He had, sir, with two eyes made of some black stone. That's just as true as you're born."
"Then it was Nikola," I cried in an outburst of astonishment, "and he followed us to Australia after all!"
Wetherell gave a deep sigh that was more like a groan than anything else; then he became suddenly a new man.
"Mr. Inspector," he cried to the police officer, "that man or traces of him must be found before daylight. I know him, and he is as slippery as an eel; if you lose a minute he'll slip through your fingers."
"One moment first," I cried. "Tell me this,
