“There were notices in the papers.”
“Is that all?”
“Mr. Denning must have known it when he stopped divorce proceedings.”
“Doubtless he believed it; he wished to do so.”
“Tyrrel, tell me what you mean.”
“I always wondered about his death rather than believed in it. Basil had a consuming sense of honor and affection for the Church and its sacred offices. He would have died willingly rather than drag them into the mire of a divorce court. When the fear became certainty he disappeared—really died to all his previous life.”
“But I cannot conceive of Basil lying for any purpose.”
“He disappeared. His family and friends took on themselves the means they thought most likely to make that disappearance a finality.”
“Have you heard anything, seen anything?”
“One night just before I left the West a traveler asked me for a night’s lodging. He had been prospecting in British America in the region of the Klondike, and was full of incidental conversation. Among many other things he told me of a wonderful sermon he had heard from a young man in a large mining camp. I did not give the story any attention at the time, but after he had gone away it came to me like a flash of light that the preacher was Basil Stanhope.”