The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-01-15

THE M
time. Meanwhile, he would be 50 much
tho farther on his way to freedom.
These arguments Knight thought
might account for the vanishing OF all
official documents and letters. 5
AS for the disposal Of the bodies, to
prevent the danger Of their floating, and
| thus telling the only tale which dead men
can tell. it would have been necessary
| to weigh each corpse. Dick wondered
| II material for this purpose could have
been secreted under the grating In the big
packing case: but he speedily dismissed
| this idea as too far-fetched. There would
| have been plenty Of stuff which might be
made to answer such a grim purpose
without the necessity of bringing 1t on
| board. He decided that the packing case
must have been dedicated to uses more
important, but what these could have
been he could not guess. Only one thing
was he sure of-the packing-case had
something to do with the mystery and 1t
had been brought on board the Xenia by
order of the murderer. AS for the man
ner of escape Of this master villain, it
absolutely baffled Knight. Il. II
! The man must have been mad to dream
| of swimming ashore at such distance
|
| had been very far from madness. Even
with lifebelt the hope Of reaching shore
without boat would have been small In
| the extreme; vet all the Xenia's boats
We're i'll their, places; and Dick could not
argue away his conviction that such a
man would have worked out a plan of
escape more clever and less obvious. Had
one of the yachts boats been missing, the
presumption would have been that some
one on board had got away with knowl-
edge Of the derelict's strange secret, and
the attention of the world would have
been turned to finding that someone. -
In spite Of all these precautions, how
ever, Dick was of opinion that the iden-
| tity of the yacht and her owner, at least,
must speedily be known. There had been
fresh vegetables, flowers, and fruit on
board, therefore the xenia must have
touched somewhere only a few hours be-
fore the tragedy began, and the efforts of
the captain of the port at Gibraltar, :: to
obtain information, would doubtless soon
be rewarded. y. t.-.. ....
Almost as If in answer to this last
| thought came a shout from little boat
under the lee of the yacht. From the
captain of the port, sir,''. called a sailor,
holding up a letter at sight Of Dick on
! the Xenia's deck. -.
| News of the Xenia had come from Tan
gier, In answer to inquiries made by the
| captain Of the port at Gibraltar No
sooner had he heard, than he had sent a
letter to Knight, out Of courtesy to his
| old friend Sir Peter Markham, whose
| agent knight was. But the news was
| disappointing. r,-
The xenia had not called at Tangier
| She had simply dropped anchor at some
distance from shore, sent in a boat, and
| bought certain supplies Of merchants in
| the town. Immediately afterwards she
had departed, and had been seen about
II o'clock in the morning, the weather
being calm, with all canvas spread, max
! ing northwest towards Gibraltar.
Two sailors had rowed the boat sent
! for supplies, and middle-aged man in
| plain clothes, who might have been a
steward or a purser, had bought vege-
tables, fruit, milk and bread. He had
spoken French at the various shops in
| Tangier which he had visited, had paid
for his purchases in Moorish money, and
had volunteered no information concern
ing the yacht or those on board except to
say that they always kept coin of numer-
! Gus countries on board, for the sake of
applying to money changers. This was
all that had been ascertained SO far, added
the captain OF the port, in his hastily
written letter to Dick; but he had tele-
graphed and written to various other sea
ports, and when he heard anything
further he would at once let Mr.. Knight
know.
For such outside information at present
Dick was trusting to this old friend of
Sir Peters, whose official position gave
him every facility for obtaining it. Dick
himself had all that he could think of on
board the derelict; but he fully realized
| that even II he succeeded in mapping out
/ every detail Of the tragedy, only half his
I task would be accomplished. He had not
been promised Eve, but a chance of win
ming her. That was all he had asked for,
at the last; but even so much could only
10 10 y, ~
past and linking it to the secret Of the
present. Dick never forgot this; but he
reminded himself often that concentration
! was the key to success. and he would not
4 let his mind wander impatiently to the
next thing which must be done when the
first labor should be safely finished. There
would be time for that by and by; mean-
while, he had hoped that help would come
to him indirectly from the captain of the
port; but the scanty details from Tangier
we're not encouraging for the future.
In his eagerness for success each idle
moment was to Dick knights mind mo-
ment wasted; and when he had read his
letter and sent back an answer Of thanks
for the courtesy, he was all eagerness to
take UP the thread of his deductions where
it had been broken off. He was working
now upon his wly-formed theory that
the owner of the yacht and the mysterious
lady had been given poison in champagne;
that to hide all traces of the poison the
bottle and the two used glasses had been
> thrown overheard
The next question was, by what means
had the eighteen or nineteen other persons
been done away with? There was the
captain and his first officer to account
{, for; twelve men in the crew; one or two
stewards: assistant cook, a valet and q
maid. All these persons would have ha6
to be got rid of if no discriminating tales
were to be told, and doubtless had beer
got rid of, since they had disappeared
. The murders must have been more or less
' simultaneous, otherwise there would have
been general alarm; and apparently
there had been nothing of the kind. AL
: had been we'll ordered and calmly carried
out. The doomed persons had died, ant
the murdered, alone among his victims
- must have spent hours in weighing thu
: bodies and throwing them overheard. I
= was because of the tedious time which
= must have been occupied by this grim tasl
. alone that Knight supposed the last mea
!. eaten on board to have been luncheon
y not dinner. And the fact that all the ligh
had been turned off except in the dining
= saloon, where the murderer might hav,
:, been working late, also suggested tina
- every one else had been gone from thu
yacht before nightfall. ..N
! Wine, which must be uncorked in tn,
loon would have heen tha mos