Sidney told Mrs. Jasher that he would try and steal the jewels in Malta or on board the tramp steamer.  Failing that, he would delay the delivery of the mummy to Braddock on some excuse and rob it at Pierside.  To make sure of escaping, he borrowed a disguise from his mother, alleging that Hope wanted the same to clothe a model.  Sidney intended to take these clothes with him, and, after stealing the jewels, to escape disguised as an old woman.  As he was slender and clean-shaven and a capital actor, he could easily manage this.

Then he arranged that Mrs. Jasher should join him in Paris, and they would sell the emeralds, and go to America, there to marry and live happily ever afterwards, like a fairy tale.

Unfortunately for the success of this plan, Mrs. Jasher thought that the Professor would make a more distinguished husband, so she betrayed all that Sidney, had arranged.

“What a beastly thing to do!” interrupted Random, disgusted.  “It is not as if she wanted to help Braddock.  I think less of Mrs. Jasher than ever I did.  She might have remembered that there is honor amongst thieves.”

“Well, she is dead, poor soul!” said Hope with a sigh.  “God knows that if she sinned, she has paid cruelly for her sin,” after which remark, as Sir Frank was silent, he resumed his reading.

Braddock was furious when he learned of his assistant’s projected trickery, and he determined to circumvent him.  He agreed to marry Mrs. Jasher, as, if he had not done so, she could have warned Sidney and he could have escaped with both the mummy and the jewels by conniving with Hervey.  The Professor could not risk that, as, remembering Hervey as Gustav Vasa, he was aware how clever and reckless he was.  Whether Braddock ever intended to marry the widow in the end it is hard to say, but he certainly pretended to consent to the engagement, which was mainly brought about by Lucy.  Then came the details of the murder so far as Mrs. Jasher knew.

One evening—­in fact on the evening when the crime was committed —­the woman was walking in her garden late.  In the moonlight she saw Braddock and Cockatoo go down along the cinderpath to the jetty near the Fort.  Wondering what they were doing, she waited up, and heard and saw them—­for it was still moonlight—­come back long after midnight.  The next day she heard of the murder, and guessed that the Professor and his slave—­for Cockatoo was little else—­had rowed up to Pierside in a boat and there had strangled Sidney and stolen the mummy.  She saw Braddock and accused him.  The Professor had then opened the case, and had pretended astonishment when discovering the corpse of the man whom Cockatoo had strangled, as he knew perfectly well.

Braddock at first denied having been to Pierside, but Mrs. Jasher insisted that she would tell the police, so he was forced to make a clean breast of it to the woman.

“Now for it,” said Random, settling himself to hear details of the crime, for he had often wondered how it had been executed.