A collection of empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and for all Mr.Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had "turned the trick" and Scotland Yard was "done!" III Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain.

They might as well have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any trace of him.

He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no royal jewels graced the display of Miss Wyvern's wedding gifts on the morrow.
But it was fruitful of other "gifts," fruitful of an even greater surprise, that "morrow." For the first time since the day he had given his promise, no "souvenir" from "The Man Who Called Himself Hamilton Cleek," no part of last night's loot came to Scotland Yard; and it was while the evening papers were making screaming "copy" and glaring headlines out of this that the surprise in question came to pass.
Miss Wyvern's wedding was over, the day and the bride had gone, and it was half-past ten at night, when Sir Horace, answering a hurry call from headquarters, drove post haste to Superintendent Narkom's private room, and passing in under a red and green lamp which burned over the doorway, entered and met that "surprise." Maverick Narkom was there alone, standing beside his desk, with the curtains of his window drawn and pinned together, and at his elbow an unlighted lamp of violet-coloured glass, standing and looking thoughtfully down at something which lay before him.

He turned as his visitor entered and made an open-handed gesture toward it.
"Look here," he said laconically, "what do you think of this ?" Sir Horace moved forward and looked; then stopped and gave a sort of wondering cry.

The electric bulbs overhead struck a glare of light down on the surface of the desk, and there, spread out on the shining oak, lay a part of the royal jewels that had been stolen from Wyvern House last night.
"Narkom! You got him, then--got him after all ?" "No, I did not get him.