I had long known. It is not a fact, however, which helps the police, nor have I myself at any time made much of it. Indeed, all that remained to me of the discovery upon Palling beach was the suggestion of a ship, and the possession of a slip of paper with its almost childish memorandum: “Captain Three Fingers—Tuesday.”

CHAPTER V.

THE MAN WITH THE THREE FINGERS.

Dr. Fabos continues his Story.

Dr. Fabos continues his Story.

I waited three years to meet a man with three fingers, and met him at last in a ball-room at Kensington. Such is the plain account of an event which must divert for the moment the whole current of my life, and, it may be, involve me in consequences so far-reaching and so perilous that I do well to ignore them. Let them be what they may, I am resolved to go on.

Horace has told us that it is good to play the fool in season. My own idea of folly is a revolt against the conventional, a retrogression from the servitude of parochial civilisation to the booths of unwashed Bohemia. In London, I am a member of the Goldsmith Club. Its wits borrow money of me and repay me by condescending to eat my dinners. Their talk is windy but refreshing. I find it a welcome contrast to that jargon of the incomprehensible which serves men of science over the walnuts. And there is a great deal of human nature to be studied in a borrower. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself could not be more dignified than some of those whose lives are to be saved by a trifling advance until Saturday.

Seven such Bohemians went at my charge to the Fancy Fair and Fête at Kensington. I had meant to stop there half an hour; I remained three hours. If you say that a woman solved the riddle, I will answer, “In a measure, yes.” Joan Fordibras introduced herself to me by thrusting a bunch of roses into my face. I changed two words with her, and desired to change twenty. Some story in the girl’s expression, some power of soul shining in her eyes, enchanted me and held me fast. Nor was I deceived at all. The story, I said, had no moral to it. They were not the eyes of an innocent child of nineteen as they should have been. They were the eyes of one who had seen and known the dark side of the lantern of life, who had suffered in her knowledge; who carried a great secret, and had met a man who was prepared to fathom it.

Joan Fordibras—that was her name. Judged by her 

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