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My companion lounged in his armchair with his usual listless expression, while Small sat stolidly opposite to him with his wooden leg cocked over his sound one.

As I exhibited the empty box he leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud.

"This is your doing, Small," said Athelney Jones angrily.

"Yes, I have put it away where you shall never lay hand upon it," he cried exultantly.

"It is my treasure, and if I can't have the loot I'll take darned good care that no one else does.

I tell you that no living man has any right to it, unless it is three men who are in the Andaman convict-barracks and myself.

I know now that I cannot have the use of it, and I know that they cannot.

I have acted all through for them as much as for myself.

It's been the sign of four with us always.

Well, I know that they would have had me do just what I have done, and throw the treasure into the Thames rather than let it go to kith or kin of Sholto or Morstan.

It was not to make them rich that we did for Achmet.

You'll find the treasure where the key is and where little Tonga is.

When I saw that your launch must catch us, I put the loot away in a safe place.

There are no rupees for you this journey."

"You are deceiving us, Small," said Athelney Jones sternly; "if you had wished to throw the treasure into the Thames, it would have been easier for you to have thrown box and all."

"Easier for me to throw and easier for you to recover," he answered with a shrewd, side-long look.

"The man that was clever enough to hunt me down is clever enough to pick an iron box from the bottom of a river.

Now that they are scattered over five miles or so, it may be a harder job.

It went to my heart to do it though.

I was half mad when you came up with us.

However, there's no good grieving over it.

I've had ups in my life, and I've had downs, but I've learned not to cry over spilled milk."

"This is a very serious matter, Small," said the detective. "If you had helped justice, instead of thwarting it in this way, you would have had a better chance at your trial."

"Justice!" snarled the ex-convict.

"A pretty justice! Whose loot is this, if it is not ours? Where is the justice that I should give it up to those who have never earned it? Look how I have earned it! Twenty long years in that fever-ridden swamp, all day at work under the mangrove-tree, all night chained up in the filthy convict-huts, bitten by mosquitoes, racked with ague, bullied by every cursed black-faced policeman who loved to take it out of a white man.

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