Stuart sprung to his feet.
"Philip Smerdon!" he exclaimed. "No, no! it cannot be!"
"It is, I say! It is he. Of all others, who but he could have done this deed? Who but he who crept back to Occleve House having in his pocket the keys whereby to enter it, who but he who shuns me because it has been told him that I knew the assassin's face! And on the very night that he is back in London, sleeping in that house, are not the clothes that might have led to his identification removed?"
Stuart paused a moment, deep in thought, and then he said: "It cannot be! On the day before the murder, in the morning, he left London for Occleve Chase. He must have been there when it was committed."
"Bah!" Guffanta said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "he did not leave London, he only made a pretence of doing so. All that day he, in his disguise, must have been engaged in tracking my poor friend, and at night he killed him." Then he paused a moment, and when he next spoke he asked a question.
"Where was he going when he left Occleve House this afternoon in the cab, and with his luggage?"
"He was going to join his father, he said," Stuart answered. "His father is ill and has been ordered abroad for his health, and, having recovered some money from his ruined business, he is going on the Continent, and Smerdon is going with him."
"And to what part of the Continent are they going?"
"I do not know, though he said something about the French coast, and afterwards, the Tyrol. Why do you ask?
"Why do I ask? Why? Because I must go also! I have to stand face to face with him, and be able to convince myself that either I have made some strange mistake, or that I am right."