I
DURING the last two years Fate, Chance, and Destiny had been too busy to attend to Mike Clinch.
But now his turn was coming in the Eternal Sequence of things. The stars in their courses indicated the beginning of the undoing of Mike Clinch.
From Esthonia a refugee Countess wrote to James Darragh in New York:
"-After two years we have discovered that it was José Quintana's band of international thieves that robbed Ricca. Quintana has disappeared.
"A Levantine diamond broker in New York, named Emanuel Sard, may be in communication with him.
"Ricca and I are going to America as soon as possible.
"Valentine."
The day Darragh received the letter he started to look up Sard.
But that very morning Sard had received a curious letter from Rotterdam. This was the letter: