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With an impatient gesture Hemingway signified Harris.

“He doesn’t know who I am,” he said. “He knows me as Hemingway. I am Henry Brownell, of Waltham, Mass.” Again his face sank into the palms of his hands. “And I’m tired–tired,” he moaned. “I am sick of not knowing, sick of running away. I give myself up.”

The detective breathed a sigh of relief that seemed to issue from his soul.

“My God,” he sighed, “you’ve given me a long chase! I’ve had eleven months of you, and I’m as sick of this as you are.” He recovered himself sharply. As though reciting an incantation, he addressed Hemingway in crisp, emotionless notes.

“Henry Brownell,” he chanted, “I arrest you in the name of the commonwealth of Massachusetts for the robbery, on October the eleventh, nineteen hundred and nine, of the Waltham Title and Trust Company. I understand,” he added, “you waive extradition and return with me of your own free will?”

With his face still in his hands, Hemingway murmured assent. The detective stepped briskly and uninvited to the table and seated himself. He was beaming with triumph, with pleasurable excitement.

“I want to send a message home, Mr. Consul,” he said. “May I use your cable blanks?”

Harris was still standing in the centre of the room looking down upon the bowed head and shoulders of Hemingway. Since, in amazement, he had sprung toward him, he had not spoken. And he was still silent.

Inside the skull of Wilbur Harris, of Iowa, U. S. A., American consul to Zanzibar, East Africa, there was going forward a mighty struggle that was not fit to put into words. For Harris and his conscience had met and were at odds. One way or the other the fight must be settled at once, and whatever he decided must be for all time. This he understood, and as his sympathies and conscience struggled for the mastery the pen of the detective, scratching at racing speed across the paper, warned him that only a few seconds were left him in which to protest or else to forever after hold his peace.

So realistic had been the acting of Hemingway that for an instant Harris himself had been deceived. But only for an instant. With his knowledge of the circumstances he saw that Hemingway was not confessing to a crime of his own, but drawing across the trail of the real criminal the convenient and useful red herring. He knew that already Hemingway had determined to sail the next morning. In leaving Zanzibar he was making no sacrifice. He merely was carrying out his original plan, and by taking away with him the detective was giving Brownell and his wife at least a month in which to again lose themselves.

What was his own duty he could not determine. That of Hemingway he knew nothing, he could truthfully testify. And if now Hemingway claimed to be Henry Brownell, he had no certain knowledge to the contrary. That through his adventure Hemingway would come to harm did not greatly disturb him. He foresaw that his friend need only send a wireless from Nantucket and at the wharf witnesses would swarm to establish his identity and make it evident the detective had blundered. And in the meanwhile Brownell and his wife, in some settlement still further removed from observation, would for the second time have fortified themselves against pursuit and capture. He saw the eyes of Hemingway fixed upon him in appeal and warning.

The brisk voice of the detective broke the silence.

“You will testify, if need be, Mr. Consul,” he said, “that you heard the prisoner admit he was Henry Brownell and that he surrendered himself of his own free will?”

For an instant the consul hesitated, then he nodded stiffly.

“I heard him,” he said.