A CRIME OF THE UNDER-SEAS

By GUY BOOTHBY

Author of "A Bid for Fortune" "Doctor Nikola" "The Beautiful White Devil"
"Pharos, the Egyptian" etc. etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY STANLEY L. WOOD

LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO LIMITED
1905

"Dropped him again with a cry that echoed in my helmet."

CONTENTS

A Crime of the Under-Seas
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII

The Phantom Stockman
The Treasure of Sacramento Nick
Into the Outer Darkness
The Story of Tommy Dodd and "The Rooster"
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
Cupid and Psyche
Misplaced Affections
In Great Waters
Mr. Aristocrat
This Man and This Woman

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

List of Illustrations

"Dropped him again with a cry that echoed in my helmet."

"I sprang to my feet on hearing this. 'Not the first!' I cried."

"A native fruit-hawker came round the corner."

"Then, just as her nose grounded, my eyes caught sight of a big creeper-covered mass."

"One moonlight night ... somebody stepped up beside him."

A Crime of the Under-Seas

CHAPTER I

There is an old saying that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives," but how true this is very few of us really understand. In the East, indeed, it amounts almost to the marvellous. There are men engaged in trades there, some of them highly lucrative, of which the world in general has never heard, and which the ordinary stay-at-home Englishman would in all probability refuse to believe, even if the most trustworthy evidence were placed before him. For instance, on the evening from which I date the story I am now about to tell you, three of us were seated chatting together in the verandah of the Grand Oriental Hotel at Colombo. We were all old friends, and we had each of us arrived but recently in Ceylon. McDougall, the big red-haired Scotchman, who was sitting on my right, had put in an appearance from Tuticorin by a British India boat only that morning, and was due to leave again for Burmah the following night. As far as I could gather he earned his living mainly by smuggling dutiable articles into other countries, where the penalty, if one is caught, is a fine of at least one thousand pounds, or the chance of receiving upwards of five years' imprisonment. The man in the big chair next to him was Callingway, a Londoner, who had hailed the day before from South America, travelling in a P. and O. steamer from Australia. He was tracking an absconding Argentine Bank Manager, and, as it afterwards transpired, was, when we came in contact with him, on the point of getting possession of the money with which the other had left the country.