The latter laughed drily.
“Whom are you going to settle down with, Kenneth?” he asked.
“The sweetest, prettiest, dearest little girl in the world.” (“That of course,” murmured the listener). “You know her, Colvin. It was thanks to my likeness to you that I did.”
“Name?”
“May Wenlock.”
“So? Do you know, Kenneth, this infernal likeness has put me to very serious inconvenience, and came within an ace of costing me my life? I suppose it was you who let out Frank Wenlock.”
“Of course it was. But don’t give it away.”
“No—no. But how did you manage to get here at all to do it without being spotted?”
“Oh, Adrian De la Rey fixed up all that. Of course I had no notion you were anywhere around.”
“I see,” said Colvin, on whom the whole ingenuity of the plot now flashed. All these witnesses against him were not perjured, then. They had been genuinely deceived. The other, watching him, had no intention of giving away his own share, direct or indirect, in the transaction, or his partnership with Adrian in that other matter. In the course of his somewhat eventful and very wandering life Kenneth Kershaw had never found overmuch scruple a paying commodity.