"Not a bit," said Simon grimly. "My other self, as you call it, had prepared for that. It seems the night before the thing happened I told Mudd—you know Mudd, the butler—that I might be called away suddenly and be absent a considerable time, that I would buy clothes and nightshirts and things, if that was so, at the place I was going to, and that he was to tell the office if I went away, and to tell Brownlow to carry on. Infernal, isn't it?"
"Infernally ingenious," said Oppenshaw; "but if you had ever studied the subject of duplex personality you would not be surprised. I have seen a young religious girl make most complex preparations for a journey as a missionary to China, utterly without her own knowledge. We caught her at the station, fortunately, just in time—but how did you find out that you gave Mudd those instructions?"
"The whole way back from Paris," said Simon, "I was preparing to meet all sorts of enquiry and bother as to my absence. Then, when I reached home, Mudd did not seem to think it out of the way; he told me he had followed my directions and notified the office when I did not return, and told them that I might be some time away. Then I got out of him what I had said about the clothes and so on."
"Tell me," said Oppenshaw suddenly, "why did you come to me to-day to tell me all this?"
"Because," said Simon, "on opening my safe this morning I found in a wallet on the top of the deed-box another bundle of notes for exactly the same amount."
CHAPTER IV DR. OPPENSHAW—continued
Oppenshaw whistled.
"A bundle of notes amounting to ten thousand pounds," said Simon; "exactly the same amount."