Presently, however, I took her aside and explained the curious facts, whereupon she said: —

“Lor’, doctor! Only fancy! The old gentleman may be two hundred years old!”

“Ah!” I remarked, “his age is only one of the minor mysteries connected with the affair. It is in order to solve them that I’ve decided that he shall remain under my care and treatment. He’s just a little wrong in his head, you know. Nothing at all serious.”

“He didn’t answer me when I spoke to him.”

“No, for a very good reason. He’s dumb.”

“Two hundred years old, insane, and dumb! Lawk a mercy! He is a strange old gentleman.”

“Well, Mrs. Richardson,” I said, “you’ve been very kind to me for the past two years, and I hope that you will do me the favour of looking after my friend.”

“Of course I will, doctor. But what’s his name?”

“He has no name. We call him the Mysterious Man.”

“Old Mister Mystery the girls will call him, I expect. But it don’t matter what they nickname him if he’s wrong in his head.”

I laughed and, leaving her, returned to my sitting-room, where the old castaway was engaged in examining all the objects in the room. He had opened the back of my small American timepiece and was watching the movement as though he had never hitherto seen any such mechanical contrivance.

The day had been a busy one for me. I had arranged with Seal that the old fellow should remain with me while the mystery of the Seahorse was solved, and as regards the gold we had placed the whole of it in a big sea chest, sealed it, and that afternoon had deposited it in the care of the manager of the Tottenham Court Road branch of the London and South-Western Bank, where I had a small account.

Seahorse

The documents, manuscripts, armour, and silver tankard which I had secured from the ancient vessel I had carried to Keppel Street. The skipper was, of course, busy on the first day of landing, but his chagrin was intense that he had lost the Seahorse. That we had really discovered it could, of course, be proved by those vessels that had spoken us in the Channel, but proof of that sort 

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