The rhythmic thump-tap of the stranger's wooden leg faded into the damp silence of the Paddington night, leaving a heavy, suffocating dread in our small parlor. I turned away from the window pane, my hand instantly going to my pocket where my old service revolver rested.
"I must follow him, Mary," I said, my voice tight with determination. "A man with such a distinct physical disability cannot travel fast through these snow-choked London streets."
"No, John," Mary said firmly, stepping between me and the parlor door. Her initial terror had vanished, replaced by that quiet, resolute courage I had admired since the first hour of our acquaintance. "You will not find him in this fog. He knows these alleys far better than an officer of the line. Besides, he did not come here to attack us tonight. He came to see if the token would stir my memory."
"Your memory, my love?" I asked, looking from her to the broken ivory elephant on the silver tray.
Mary walked purposefully toward the corner of the room, where a heavy, brass-bound leather traveling trunk sat beneath a display of watercolor paintings. It was her father’s old trunk, the very one that had accompanied Captain Morstan from the shifting sands of India to his final, tragic destination in London.
"When Mr. Holmes and you resolved the mystery of the Agra treasure, we believed we had cataloged every scrap of my father's papers," Mary said, kneeling before the trunk. She drew a small brass key from a chain around her neck. "We found the map of the four companions, yes. But there was a second lining to this lid that I discovered only last winter while cleaning the old leather."
With a sharp click, she unlocked the trunk and threw back the lid. She pressed her fingers against a brass rivet hidden in the decorative tufting of the interior silk. With a dull snap, a false panel dropped down, revealing a narrow, dust-covered recess.
Inside lay a single, slim volume bound in faded red morocco leather. Its pages were yellowed with age and stained with the distinctive circular rings of old salt water. I knelt beside her, lifting the book into the light of our oil lamp.
"It is an accounting ledger," I murmured, turning the brittle pages.
"More than that, John," Mary said, pointing to the columns of names written in her father's neat, military hand. "Look at the dates. These entries were made during his final months at the Andaman penal colony. It is a meticulous record of every jewel, every artifact, and every solid gold coin that Major Sholto and he managed to smuggle out of the fort before Jonathan Small took his revenge."
My eyes scanned down the final page, stopping on an entry that made my breath catch in my throat. Written in faded black ink, surrounded by urgent exclamation marks, was a single line:
The Blue Carbuncle of Morcar—deposited with the London agent in exchange for passage aboard the 'Ganges' transport. 1878.
"Great heavens, Mary," I gasped, the pieces of the puzzle crashing together in my mind. "The Countess of Morcar did not lose her gem for the first time last Christmas. It was stolen a decade earlier in India, used as a bribe by your father and Sholto to secure their escape, and then returned to the Countess by a fence who feared the curse of the stone!"
Before I could say more, a low, thudding sound echoed from the small hallway downstairs. It was followed by the sharp, splintering crash of our front door being violently forced from its hinges. The ghosts of the Andaman Islands had not waited for the morning; they had come to claim the ledger by force.
