



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
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                    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




[Illustration: "Dropped him again with a cry that echoed in my helmet."]




CONTENTS


A CRIME OF THE UNDER-SEAS

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




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. Needless to say he was
not a Government servant, nor were the Banking Company in question aware
of his endeavours. Lastly there was myself, Christopher Collon, aged
thirty-six, whose walk in life was even stranger, if such a thing were
possible, than those of the two men I have just described. One thing at
any rate is certain, and that is that if I had been called upon to give
an accurate description of myself and my profession at that time, I
should have found it extremely difficult to do so. Had I been the
possessor of a smart London office, a private secretary, and half a
dozen corresponding clerks, I should probably have called myself a
private detective on a large scale, or, as they put it in the
advertisement columns of our daily papers, a Private Enquiry Agent. Yet
that description would scarcely have suited me; I was that and something
more. At any rate it was a pretty hard life, and by the same token a
fairly hazardous one. This will be the better understood when I say that
one day