"When at last Mrs. Pendean died in Italy, her husband attended the funeral at Naples and returned to England immediately afterward with his son. The boy was subsequently apprenticed to a dentist, having expressed a wish to follow that profession. He promised well, passed his examinations and practised at Penzance for a time. But then he ceased to be interested in the work and presently joined his father. In connection with the pilchard trade, he now visited Italy and often spent a month at a time in that country.
"Few could give me any information as to his nature, and pictures of him did not apparently exist; but an elderly relative was able to tell me that Michael had been a silent, difficult boy. She also showed me an old photograph of his parents, taken together with their son when he must have been a child of three, or thereabout. His father didn't suggest a man of character; but Mrs. Pendean appeared to be a very handsome creature indeed, and it was at the moment I studied her features through a magnifying glass that I won my first conviction of a familiar likeness.
"It is a rule with me, when any sudden flash of intuition throws real or false light upon a case, to submit the inspiration to a most searching and destructive analysis and bring every known fact against it. Thus, on seeing a possible glimpse of Giuseppe Doria's beautiful countenance reflected upon my eyes from the photograph of the mother of Michael Pendean, I began to marshal all my knowledge to confound any deduction from that accident. But judge of my interest and surprise when I found nothing that could be pointed to as absolute refutation of the theory now taking such swift shape in my mind. Not one sure fact clashed with the possibility.
"Nothing at present was positively known by me which made it out of the question that Joseph Pendean's wife should be the mother of Giuseppe Doria. But none the less many facts might exist as yet beyond my knowledge, which would prove such a suspicion vain. I considered how to obtain these facts and naturally my thought turned to Giuseppe himself. To show you by what faltering steps we sometimes climb to safe ground, I may say that at this stage of my inquiry I had not imagined Doria and Michael Pendean were one and the same person. That was to come. For the moment I conceived of the possibility that Madame Pendean, a lady who had caused some fluttering in the Wesleyan dovecots of Penzance, might by chance have been the mother of a second son in her native country. I imagined that Michael and an Italian half brother might know each other, and that the two were working together to destroy the brothers Redmayne, so that Michael's wife should inherit all the family money.
"Having found out what Penzance could tell me, I beat it up to Dartmouth, because I was exceedingly anxious to learn, if possible, the exact date when Giuseppe Doria entered the employment of Bendigo Redmayne as motor boatman. Albert's brother hadn't any friends that I could find; but I traced his doctor and, though he was not in a position to enlighten me, he knew another man—an innkeeper at Tor-cross, some miles away on the coast—who might be familiar with this vital date.
"Mr. Noah Blades proved a very shrewd and capable chap. Bendigo Redmayne had known him well, and it was after spending a week at the Tor-cross Hotel with Blades and going fishing in his motor boat, that the old sailor had decided to start one himself at 'Crow's Nest.' He did so and his first boatman was a failure. Then he advertised for another and received a good many applications. He'd sailed with Italians and liked them on a ship, and he decided for Giuseppe Doria, whose testimonials appeared to be exceptional. The man came along and, two days after his arrival, ran Bendigo down to Tor-cross in his launch to see Blades.
"Redmayne, of course, was full of the murder at Princetown, which had just occurred, and the tragedy proved so interesting that Blades had little time to notice the new motor boatman. But what matters is that we know it was on the day after the murder—on the very day Bendigo heard what his brother, Robert, was supposed to have done at Foggintor Quarry—that his new man, Giuseppe Doria, arrived at 'Crow's Nest' and took on his new duties.
"From that all-important fact I built my case, and you don't need to be told how every step of the way threw light upon the next until I had reached the goal. Robert Redmayne is seen on the night of Michael Pendean's supposed destruction. He is traced home again to Paignton. He leaves his diggings before anybody is up and, from that exit, vanishes off the face of the earth. But during the same day—probably by noon—Giuseppe Doria arrives at 'Crow's Nest'—an Italian whom nobody knows, or has even seen before.
"That meant good-bye to any theory of a half brother for Michael; and it also meant that not Pendean, but his wife's uncle, Robert Redmayne, perished on Dartmoor. And there he lies yet, my son!"
Mr. Ganns took snuff and proceeded.