Elsie Brandon receives a letter from her uncle in South Africa, telling her that he has found a huge diamond in the rough which he is shipping to America in a kaffir's skull, addressing the package to an assumed name at the express office. His reason for doing this is that a man named Healy is trying to steal the diamond. He adds that he will follow on a later steamer and claim the package. Six months afterward Elsie and Jack Dwyer, a young law student, who loves her but is too poor to marry, go to meet the steamer on which the girl's uncle is expected. He fails to appear, and they learn of the disappearance of a man overboard, whose description corresponds with that of Mr. Brandon. Not knowing the assumed name, they cannot claim the package containing the diamond. They attend a sale of unclaimed express luggage, in the vain hope of identifying the package. The eagerness of a rough looking man in the crowd to buy a certain box gives them a clue, and they manage to bid him down and get away with the box. It proves to contain the skull and the diamond. Elsie persuades Dwyer to take the gem for safe keeping. He is shadowed to his lodgings, however, by the defeated bidder who is none other than Healy. Elsie, fearing this very thing, follows, after summoning the police. Healy's arrest results in his conviction of the murder of Brandon on shipboard. Elsie and Dwyer sell the diamond, and start married life with a fortune.
