“Known for certain? Since the day I visited your friend Brown. He rather thought he had seen me before. I am not at all unlike my uncle.”
“But you suspected before that?”
“Oh yes, some time before.”
Hannasyde brought his hand down on his knee. “Now I know what it was you saw in that drawer!” he said, annoyance in his voice. “I ought to have thought of that sooner!”
Randall looked down at him with faint amusement. “My dear Superintendent! What drawer?”
“In your uncle's desk. There was a pair of sun-glasses, horn-rimmed. I thought at the time that you had expected to see something which wasn't there.”
Randall gave a little laugh. “Oh no! But my uncle not only never wore sun-glasses, but poured scorn on those who did. I merely thought it a little odd when I saw that pair in his desk. I think, you know, that I had better tell you just what happened.”
Hannasyde nodded, and watched him move towards the deep chair, and sit down on one of its arms.
Randall lit a cigarette, and smoked in silence for a minute, frowning. “Well, to go back to the very beginning, Edward Rumbold had a wife living in Australia. The lady at Holly Lodge isn't aware of this—but as Rumbold was not our friend's real name, I hardly think it will be necessary to tell her that she has been bigamously married for the past ten years, do you?”
“I don't know. Please go on!”