The Argosy, Vol. 51

The Fate of the Hara Diamond, Chapter IX–X

This serialized adventure follows Captain Edmund Ducie, a impoverished former military officer, who rescues the injured Russian M. Platzoff from a railway carriage disaster near "The Golden Griffin" tavern. Ducie tends Platzoff's head wound while the Russian recovers. Platzoff anxiously searches for a missing despatch box containing papers—particularly a blue sheet covered in figures prefaced by Italian text from The Confessions of Parthento the Mystic (Amsterdam, 1698), containing cryptic information of great importance. Though Ducie recovers the diamond pin, he claims the critical manuscript is lost, but secretly pockets it. After Platzoff's recovery and departure, Chapter X reveals Ducie's character: born into gentry wealth, he is an incurable gambler who has squandered his nine-thousand-pound inheritance and most of his paternal inheritance, surviving through his father's allowance. The text is cut off mid-sentence.