“She was.”
“Without your knowledge?”
“Entirely so.”
“Corresponded with him?”
“Not exactly.”
“How, not exactly?”
“He wrote to her—occasionally. She wrote to him frequently—but she never sent her letters.”
“Ah!”
The exclamation was sharp, short and conveyed little. Yet with its escape, the whole scaffolding of this man’s hold upon life and his own fate went down in indistinguishable chaos. Mr. Challoner realised a sense of havoc, though the eyes bent upon his countenance had not wavered, nor the stalwart figure moved.
“I have read some of those letters,” the inventor finally acknowledged. “The police took great pains to place them under my eye, supposing them to have been meant for me because of the initials written on the wrapper. But they were meant for Oswald. You believe that now?”