Macduff strained and whimpered unheeded as Vail still held him with that subconscious grip on his collar. All three were staring open-mouthed at the sprawling figure on the bricks. For a space nobody spoke.
Then, with a start, as of one who comes out of a trance, Miss Gregg burst into hysterically rapid speech.
“I knew it all the time!” she volleyed. “I knew it all the time—clear in the back of my head where the true thoughts grow—the thoughts that are so true they don’t dare force themselves to the front of the mind where the everyday thinking is done. I knew it! There were no twins at all. There was only Osmun!”
The two others blinked stupidly at her. She rattled on with growing certainty:
“Osmun was the only one of the Creede twins to come back alive from France. I know it. There is no Clive Creede. There never has been since the war. He must have died over there. Stop and think, both of you! Did you ever see the two twins together since Osmun came from overseas? Not once. Did you?”
“Good Lord!” sputtered the doctor. “Of course I have. Often. At—at least, I—I’m sure I must have. I—”
“She is right,” interposed Vail in something like awe, “I swear I believe she is right. I never stopped to think about it. But I can’t remember seeing them together once since—”
“It was Osmun, alone!” declared Miss Gregg. “He played both rôles. Though heaven alone knows why he should have done such a queer thing. And he worked it cleverly. Oh, Oz always had brains! Clive was supposed to live here at Rackrent Farm, while Oz lived at Canobie—those two who had never lived apart before! That was to make the dual rôle possible. He couldn’t have pretended they lived in the same house without the servants or some guest discovering there was only one of them. But a couple of miles apart he could divide his time between Rackrent and Canobie in a plausible enough way.”
“But—”
“Bald and lame and with a stoop and wearing thick spectacles he was Osmun. Erect and with a mass of hair falling over his forehead and no glasses he was Clive. There was no need to make up the face. They had been twins.”