These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it."
"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked.
I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to come in to inquire after me.
"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J.P., and a landed proprietor.
"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only son.
"One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life.
Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.
Trevor make a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and jumping out of his chair, he ran into the house.
Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low voice.
Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmate with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors.
What was the past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveler, and gold-digger, and how had he placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman?