CHAPTER VI.
DEATH COMES TOO SOON.“So that he won’t know his own name when he is able to be about again!”
Nick knew very well what that meant. The sailor was to be beaten, and imprisoned, and drugged, and frightened, until he became crazed; and then turned out into the world again. Even if some faint glimmerings of what had taken place should come to him, no one would credit the statement of a half-crazed sailor, who, as would be believed, came by his infirmity on the high seas and had forgotten!
“It is devilish!” muttered the detective. “I wonder how I am going to get at the fellow before they quite kill his intelligence?”
Locked in the unconscious brain of the sailor was the story of the taking of the diamonds, if not the story of the murder of Alvin Maynard.
If he could only communi
