“But you said that Marchant was living under an assumed name.”
“Did I?” asked Sefton, surprised. “I don’t remember saying it, but it is the fact all the same. At Venice Harold Marchant called himself Smith; and Smith was the name he gave on board the P. and O. steamer which took him to Alexandria.”
“Why did he go to Alexandria?”
“Why? To get away from Venice in the quickest and completest manner he could. When he saw that the knife had been fatal, he grasped the situation in an instant, made a dash for the door, ran through the crowd along the Piazzetta, jumped into the water, and swam to the steamer, which was getting up steam for departure. No one guessed that he would make for the steamer. It was a longish swim; and while his pursuers were groping about among the gondolas the steamer was moving off with Harold on board her. Just like him—always quick at expedients; ready at every point where his own interests were at stake; tricky, shifty, dishonest to the core; but a devil for pluck, and as strong as a young lion.”
“I begin to remember the story, now you recall the details,” said Vansittart, who had by this time mastered every sign of agitation, and was firm as iron. “But in all that you have said I see nothing to fix Harold Marchant as the homicide. He might as easily have been the man who was killed.”
“No, no; the man who was killed was a stranger—a Cook’s tourist, a nobody, about whose fate there were no inquiries. It was Marchant who was the Venetian girl’s protector. It was Marchant who was jealous. The whole story is in perfect accord with Marchant’s character. I have seen his temper in a row—seen him when, if he had had a knife handy, by Heaven! he would have used it.”
“But where is the link between Marchant—Marchant at the diamond fields, Marchant at New York—and the man at Venice calling himself Smith? You don’t even pretend to show me that.”
“Ferrari shall show you that. The story is a long one, but there is no solution of continuity. Ferrari shall take you over the ground, step by step, till he brings you from Marchant in Mashonaland to Marchant landing at Alexandria.”
“And after the landing at Alexandria? What then? The thing happened more than three years ago, you say. Did the earth open and swallow Harold Marchant after he landed at Alexandria? Or, if not, what has he been doing since? Why has not your Ferrari—this courier-guide who is so clever at tracing people—traced him a little further? Why should the last link of the chain be the landing at Alexandria?”
“Because, as I have been telling you, Harold Marchant is an uncommonly clever fellow; and having got off with a whole skin—escaping the penalty of a crime which at the least was manslaughter—he would take very good care to sink his identity ever afterwards, and in all probability would bid a long farewell to the old world.”