“I understand that you’ve done some bounty hunting in your time,” said Cain. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

“We all have our obsessions, Mr. Cain,” replied Stern. “Yours is obviously chasing criminals all across the galaxy. Mine, I soon discovered, lay in quite a different direction.”

“All right. Go on.”

“Shortly thereafter I noticed a sudden dramatic increase in my business.”

“Which business was that?” interrupted Cain.

“I like to think of it as my wholesale redistribution network.”

“Fencing.”

“Fencing,” agreed Stern. “By the time I reached Port étrange I had a pretty strong feeling that I was dealing with Santiago, but of course I was never so tactless as to ask.”

“Who would you have asked?”

“I dealt primarily with a man named Duncan Black—a large man, who wore a patch over his left eye—but from time to time there were others.”

“Nobody wears eyepatches,” said Cain sharply.

“Black did.”

“Why didn’t he just get a new eye? I’ve got one: it sees better than the one I was born with.”

“How should I know? Possibly he thought it made him look dashing and romantic.” Stern paused. “At any rate, I continued to enjoy a very profitable arrangement. Then, seven years ago, I received a shipment of goods that eliminated any lingering doubts I may have had that I was indeed doing business with Santiago.”

“And what was that?”

“Do you see that paperweight over there?” asked Stern, indicating what appeared to be a small gold bar on a nearby table.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you examine it?”

Cain got up, walked over to the paperweight, and inspected it.

“It looks like gold bullion,” he said.

“Pick it up and turn it over,” suggested Stern.

It required both hands for Cain to lift it. When he did so, he noticed a nine-digit number burned into the bottom of it.

“That number corresponds to part of a gold shipment that Santiago stole from a navy convoy.”

“The Epsilon Eridani robbery?” asked Cain.

Stern nodded. “I’m sure you can confirm the number through your various sources. The numbers had been eliminated from all the other bars, but somehow they missed that one—so I kept it for a souvenir, never knowing when it might be of some minor use to me.” He smiled. “Anyway, it was then that I knew for sure that Black and the others were Santiago’s agents.”

“That still doesn’t prove the man you saw in jail was Santiago,” said Cain, putting the gold bar back down.