“‘Some years ago,’ he replied, thoughtfully, ‘my twin-brother was alive, and you would not have known us from one another—we were veritable Dromios.’
“‘Is he dead now?’
“‘I am sorry to say he is. We were much attached to each other, but he was of a roving disposition and would never stick to anything. I started him in several professions, but he always repaid my kindness by ingratitude, which is hard to bear from a relation. At length, on my refusing to assist him any longer, he ran away to sea, and the ship in which he sailed was subsequently wrecked on a voyage to Malaga.’
“‘Oh!’ I said, with a prolonged exclamation; I began to see my way a little clearer.
“Wishing Mr. Halliday good-bye, I left the station-house to commence operations. If what the prisoner said about his being in attendance upon the Muswell-hill Board of Works at the very time at which he was accused of being at an obscure pot-house in Westminster, in company with two other men not in custody, to defraud a simple-minded countryman of his money, the case was at an end. I at once left a retainer for Mr. Sea and engaged his services for Mr. Joseph Halliday on the morrow.
“I had a shrewd suspicion that I was about to embark in the investigation of one of the strangest cases of mistaken identity that had ever been heard of; nor was I mistaken, as after events tended to prove.
“I was acquainted with a man of the name of Pegon—a Frenchman—who had, it was popularly believed, been a thief in his own country, although he might have left France through political motives.
“On arriving in England he had taken service in the police force, and evinced such wonderful dexterity in tracking criminals that he speedily became one of our most valued detectives.
“The old saying—set a thief to catch a thief—was, admitting the reports about Pegon to be true, never better exemplified than in the person of the dapper little Gaul. He was not a proficient in the English language; he talked it in a half-broken sort of way, rather amusing than otherwise. It was to Pegon that I betook myself after leaving Mr. Sea’s office.
“I found him at his favourite public-house—the ‘Three Spies.’ He was seldom at home, and when not on business he could always be discovered at the before-mentioned tavern or else at the Welsh ambassador’s—the ‘Goat in Boots.’