"What man could thus have had the entrance to the back of the house?" Stuart asked. "I am bewildered with horrible thoughts!"
"I also was bewildered, but I am now no longer so. I knew the man's face; now--to-day--I know for certain who he was. Within the last few days it flashed upon me, yet I doubted; but my doubts are satisfied. I only learned of his existence ten days ago, or I should have suspected him before."
"Who was it?" Stuart said. "Tell me at once."
"Wait yet a moment, and listen to me. As I saw that man enter the house, a house that I, a stranger, could see was the mansion of some person of importance, it came to me, to my mind, that this was the owner, the master of that house, who had killed my friend. His reason for doing so I could not guess--it might have been for the love of a woman, or for hate, or about money--but that it was so I was confident. And I said to myself, 'So! you cannot escape me! I know your house, to-morrow I shall know your name, and, if in two or three days the police have not got you in their power--I will wait that while, for it is better they should take you than I--then I will kill you.' And I went away thinking thus; there was no need to watch more. I held him, for he could not escape I thought, in my hand."
"But it was not the owner of the house," Stuart said, "it was not Lord Penlyn who killed him. He was away at an hotel at the time."
"Yes, he was--though still it would be possible for him then to have entered his own house--but his was not the face of the man I had seen. I learnt that, to my amazement, when for the first time I stood before him. But, listen again! In the morning, at a restaurant, I found in a Directory, of which I had learnt the use, that that house was Occleve House, and that Lord Penlyn was the owner of it. And then my surprise was great, for only an hour or so before I had found that Occleve was the right name of Walter Cundall."
"You had learnt that?"
"When I lifted Walter in my arms in the Park, I felt against his breast a book half out of his pocket. The murderer had missed that! I took that book, for even in my haste and grief, I thought that in it might be something that would give me a clue. But what were really in it of importance were a certificate of his mother's marriage, another of his own birth, and a letter, years old, from her to him. They told me all, and, moreover they proved to me, as I then thought, that his murderer lived in the very house and bore the very name that by right seemed to be his.
"They were the certificates he showed to them on the morning he disclosed himself," Stuart said, "and he had not removed them from his pocket-book when he was killed!"
"Yes! that he showed to them; you have said it! It was to two of them that he showed those papers. And one was the friend of the other, he lived with and upon him, he dares not meet me face to face, he evades me! he, he is the murderer. He, Philip Smerdon!"