“Now let us have the details of the case, if you please, Captain,” said Cleek, coming to the point of the interview with as little beating about the bush as possible.  “Mr. Narkom has given me a vague idea of the nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course.  I am told that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most mysterious manner, and without any clue to the assassin or his motive; indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of others, yet remains unknown and invisible.  Frankly, I never heard of but one instance which at all resembles this or—­No, Mr. Narkom, it is nothing that ever came your way, no affair that has happened since you and I first met, sir.  It was a long time ago—­eight or ten years, to be exact—­and a good many miles from England.  The cases were somewhat similar, judging from the scanty outline you have given me, and—­What’s that?  No, the criminal was never apprehended.  He got away, and his methods were never generally known.  Even if they had been, they were not those which any desperado might have emulated, any tyro practised.  They required a certain knowledge of anatomy, chemical action—­even surgery.  I don’t believe that ten people in the world knew about the thing at that time.  I stumbled upon what I believed was the solution of the mystery whilst I was taking a course of chemistry for—­well, for the purpose of demonstrating the possibility of manufacturing precious stones of a size and weight to make them a profitable—­er—­speculation.  The science in medicine was not so advanced in those days as it is now, and when I ventured to suggest to certain doctors what I believed to have been the cause of the mysterious deaths and the modus operandi of the murderer, I simply got laughed at for my pains.  I felt pretty certain of my facts, however, and pretty certain of the man who was guilty.  Pardon?  No, not alive now; that fellow had his brains blown out in a bar-room brawl before I left New Zealand.”

“New Zealand?” struck in Captain Morford agitatedly.  “I say, that’s a rum go, isn’t it, Mr. Narkom.  New Zealand is where the Comstocks come from—­or, rather, the father and mother did.”

“By Jove!  Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap,” chimed in Narkom.  “Don’t think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between the two cases?  In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New Zealand didn’t really die after all?”

“Shortly, the chemist?  Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom.  I was in the bar-room when he was killed.  Three bullets went through his head, and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the floor.  The methods may be the same, but not the man—­there is not the ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two.  But let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case.  When, where, and how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?”