"Miss Manning, have you ever seen this man before?" asked McKelvie when Lee was seated and Cora had turned toward us.
The girl looked Cunningham up and down, from the sole of his patent leather shoes to the crown of his gray-streaked red hair, then she shook her head and answered simply, "No, Mr. McKelvie, I have never seen him before."
"Now I trust that you are satisfied?" demanded Cunningham, insolently, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. "You will oblige me by removing these things."
Though he held out his manacled hands to McKelvie, his eyes remained on Cora's face with a look impossible to mistake. The man was in love with her, though how that was possible when she did not know him, I was at a loss to decide. McKelvie took a step forward and I thought he was going to comply with Cunningham's request, but he made no move to release his prisoner.
"Sorry to have to refuse a gentleman of your standing, but you are far safer to me with the bracelets on," returned McKelvie imperturbably. "You are undoubtedly clever or you could not have evaded me so long, but the trouble with you, as it is with all clever criminals, is that you are egotistical. You commit a crime and get away with it and then you immediately think yourself a genius, so much more wonderful than your fellows who have paid the penalty for their deeds, so infinitely superior to the police and the detectives that you have no fear of being caught. But like all your class, there is a weak joint in your armor. There is no such thing as an infallible criminal and a perfect crime. You may get away once, or perhaps a score of times, but in the end your weakness trips you and you fall into the hands of the authorities. In your case the thing that tripped you and delivered you to us was—love for a woman. A dangerous game to play, the woman game, Mr. Cunningham, but love knows no reason. You were so desperately infatuated with Cora Manning that the thought of going away and leaving her to a more successful rival was agony to you, and so you remained to persuade her to go with you. That is why you are here now, facing arrest under an accusation of murder."
In wondering silence we listened to McKelvie's words and Cora said quickly, "In love with me? But I never saw him before."
Cunningham only smiled coolly. "You have no proof, my dear sir, no proof at all."
"Haven't I? I am not as amateurish as I look," said McKelvie, dryly. Then he faced the man before him squarely and addressed him in a tone of grim earnestness from which all hint of banter had fled. "You demand proofs. I will give them to you. I know why the murder was committed, why Mrs. Darwin was implicated, because I know exactly what took place in this room on the night of October seventh, from the moment when Richard Trenton stepped through that French window to the moment when the murderer left the room by the secret entrance. In other words, the game is up—Mr. Philip Darwin!" and McKelvie's hand shot out toward his prisoner's face.
I heard Lee's wondering, "Uncle Phil?" and unable to believe my ears I took a second look. Then, "Good God!" I cried, for the red hair and beard were gone and the man standing where Cunningham had been was indeed Ruth's husband, for whose murder she was even now enduring the horrors of prison life, Philip Darwin, but Philip Darwin without his eyeglasses and without his beard!
Who, then, was the man we had found dead in this room, the man we had buried under Darwin's name? A sudden conviction borne of McKelvie's last words flashed across my mind.