Mr. Quarterpage shook his head.
“I’ve only read one newspaper, sir, since I was a young man,” he replied. “I take the Times, sir—we always took it, aye, even in the days when newspapers were taxed.”
“Very good,” said Spargo. “But perhaps I can tell you a little more than you’ve read, for I’ve been working up that case ever since the body of the man known as John Marbury was found. Now, if you’ll just give me your attention, I’ll tell you the whole story from that moment until—now.”
And Spargo, briefly, succinctly, re-told the story of the Marbury case from the first instant of his own connection with it until the discovery of the silver ticket, and Mr. Quarterpage listened in rapt attention, nodding his head from time to time as the younger man made his points.
“And now, Mr. Quarterpage,” concluded Spargo, “this is the point I’ve come to. I believe that the man who came to the Anglo-Orient Hotel as John Marbury and who was undoubtedly murdered in Middle Temple Lane that night, was John Maitland—I haven’t a doubt about it after learning what you tell me about the silver ticket. I’ve found out a great deal that’s valuable here, and I think I’m getting nearer to a solution of the mystery. That is, of course, to find out who murdered John Maitland, or Marbury. What you have told me about the Chamberlayne affair has led me to think this—there may have been people, or a person, in London, who was anxious to get Marbury, as we’ll call him, out of the way, and who somehow encountered him that night—anxious to silence him, I mean, because of the Chamberlayne affair. And I wondered, as there is so much mystery about him, and as he won’t give any account of himself, if this man Aylmore was really Chamberlayne. Yes, I wondered that! But Aylmore’s a tall, finely-built man, quite six feet in height, and his beard, though it’s now getting grizzled, has been very dark, and Chamberlayne, you say, was a medium-sized, fair man, with blue eyes.”
“That’s so, sir,” assented Mr. Quarterpage. “Yes, a middling-sized man, and fair—very fair. Deary me, Mr. Spargo!—this is a revelation. And you really think, sir, that John Maitland and John Marbury are one and the same person?”
“I’m sure of it, now,” said Spargo. “I see it in this way. Maitland, on his release, went out to Australia, and there he stopped. At last he comes back, evidently well-to-do. He’s murdered the very day of his arrival. Aylmore is the only man who knows anything of him—Aylmore won’t tell all he knows; that’s flat. But Aylmore’s admitted that he knew him at some vague date, say from twenty-one to twenty-two or three years ago. Now, where did Aylmore know him? He says in London. That’s a vague term. He won’t say where—he won’t say anything definite—he won’t even say what he, Aylmore, himself was in those days. Do you recollect anything of anybody like Aylmore coming here to see Maitland, Mr. Quarterpage?”
“I don’t,” answered Mr. Quarterpage. “Maitland was a very quiet, retiring fellow, sir: he was about the quietest man in the town. I never remember that he had visitors; certainly I’ve no recollection of such a friend of his as this Aylmore, from your description of him, would be at that time.”
“Did Maitland go up to London much in those days?” asked Spargo.
Mr. Quarterpage laughed.