He had accepted the identification of the remains, but on whose testimony? On that of the criminals, Mrs. Berlyn and the man whom he had thought was Jefferson Pyke. Of course at the time at which he interviewed them he had no idea of their connection with the crime, and therefore no reason to doubt their statements, but his error came in just here: that by the time he began to suspect them the identification was so firmly fixed in his mind that he overlooked the fact that it depended on them. If he had remembered that supremely important point he would have questioned the dead man’s identity. This would have led him to investigate, even more closely than he had, the movements of the Pykes and no doubt he would have thus discovered the impersonation which had been carried out.
The first question, then, which demanded solution was: If the man whom he had thought was Jefferson Pyke was really his cousin, where was Jefferson himself?
Like a man in a dream French went back to Kepple Street. Was Mrs. Welsh absolutely sure that the Mr. Pyke who had engaged her rooms on the was the same man who had occupied them ever since? Mrs. Welsh, when at last she had been made to understand the question, was absolutely sure.
If she were right, Stanley’s impersonation of Jefferson must have begun on that . They had both been at the Houston in the morning. By the evening Jefferson, the real Jefferson, apparently had vanished.
Then suddenly French remembered the episode of the broken basin. It had not occurred to him before, but now he wondered if there was not more here than met the eye. The accident was unlikely. Had the basin been deliberately broken to help on some trick?
He went back to the Houston and once again interviewed the reception clerk. But she could add nothing to her former statement. Then he reexamined the chambermaid. From her at last he obtained a new fact, an apparently trifling fact, but what a difference it made in his conclusion!
The girl had stated that the gentleman who broke the basin had told her that he had overslept himself and had asked her to see that his friend in No. 351 was awake. She had gone and found that the friend was already up. Now French learned that by “up” she had meant that the man was up and dressed and had left his room.
At this a light shone into French’s mind. He retired to a corner of the smoking room, and after half an hour’s hard thinking he reached a detailed solution.
He saw that it would be possible for Stanley to arrive at the hotel and engage two rooms, ostensibly for himself and his cousin. He would go to his own room after explaining that his cousin would arrive later in the day. After impressing his personality on the staff, he would go out, make up as Jefferson, return with more luggage, and occupy the second room which had been engaged. He would sleep in Jefferson’s room, and in the morning ring early for shaving-water, get up, dress, take his luggage down, pay his bill, and leave the hotel. Then hurrying back, he would slip into his own room unobserved, go to bed, and ring again for hot water, giving the maid the message about his friend. Lest the incident should be forgotten in the event of future enquiries, he would smash the basin, thus impressing his identity on all concerned.
That this was what Stanley had done, French was now pretty sure, and he despatched wires to the French and Italian police asking if the same trick had been carried out in Paris and at Grasse and San Remo. After some time there were replies. It had been carried out in Paris, but not at the other two places. At the latter there was no doubt that both men had been present.
Jefferson Pyke had, therefore, disappeared at some point between Grasse and Paris, and French soon saw that there was nothing for it but to go to the Riviera and himself enquire into the men’s movements. Accordingly, after consultation with his chief he obtained a letter to the French police, and travelling to Marseilles, began work. Slowly and painfully he traced the two from Marseilles to San Remo, to Monte Carlo, to Grasse, and finally to Nice. And there in the pleasure city, on the shores of the Mediterranean, he came on the explanation he sought.
For at Nice, Jefferson Pyke had died. At first, knowing what he did, French had suspected foul play. But in this he found he was mistaken. Jefferson had been taken ill at his hotel and had at once been moved to a hospital. There he had been operated on for appendicitis. French saw the doctor who had had charge of the case and learned the details. There had been complications and the operation could not save him.
French was deeply chagrined at his failure to learn so essential a fact at an earlier stage in his investigation. He swore great oaths to his gods that never, never again should he fail to follow up to the very end every clue which presented itself, whether he thought it likely to prove valuable or not.
With identity of murderer and victim established, a comparatively short further enquiry sufficed to clear up the details of the affair which were still in doubt. And dreadful reading they made.
It seemed that soon after Phyllis Considine came to Ashburton as the bride of Charles Berlyn she found she had made a terrible mistake in her marriage. The feeling which she had imagined was love died away, and she saw herself tied for life to a man whom she disliked. A mutual coldness inevitably resulted, which rapidly widened as the husband also found himself disillusioned. On Phyllis’s side less than a year sufficed to turn it into a bitter hatred.
Under these miserable
