Tremaine a handsome sum to take himself off—in fact, mortgaging his home to do it.
“Miss Croydon gradually recovers; but she is Tremaine’s wife. Yet in 1900 she marries Delroy. She must, therefore, have had good reason to believe Tremaine dead.”
“Don’t you see?” I cried. “That’s the meaning of that item about the foundering of the Centaur, with all on board. Tremaine was a passenger and she knew it.”
“Good!” nodded Godfrey. “That’s undoubtedly it. Let me see,” and he turned back to the clipping; “that was in 1892. His name, perhaps, appeared among the missing; she waited eight years, and at last, believing his death established beyond a doubt, married again.
“Now let us see what Tremaine was doing. In 1896 he was in Australia, planning a bank robbery. He meets Thompson, descended from his estate of captain to that of common sailor. Tremaine takes Thompson in on the plan; and Thompson, to get even for that treachery at Sing Sing, gives him away. Tremaine, no doubt, got a penitentiary sentence. He probably broke jail again, for in 1899 he appears at Martinique, supposedly from South America. He has considerable money, which he no doubt stole somewhere, and perhaps he chose St. Pierre as a safe place to stay in hiding until the hue and cry after him was over. He would have some acquaintance with the island, if he landed there from the wreck.
“Thompson learns where he is—perhaps even sees him at St Pierre—and puts a bouquet to his revenge
