“His name? Edwards.”
“It’s not Eccles, is it?”
She glanced quickly round as we walked, searching my face in the dusk.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because, when I first saw him to-day on the racecourse with Captain Bird, he put me in mind of the fine gentleman who came to us that Sunday at Crabb Cot, calling himself Detective Eccles, and carried off Mrs. Todhetley’s other earring.”
Mrs. Bird looked straight before her, making no answer.
“You must remember that afternoon, Lucy. When I ran over to old Coney’s for Mrs. Todhetley, you were there, you know; and I told you all about the earrings and the detective officer, then making his dinner of cold beef at our house while he waited for the mother to come home and produce the earring. Don’t you remember? You were just going back to Worcester.”
Still she said not a word.
“Lucy, I think it is the same man. Although his black moustache is gone, I feel sure it is he. The face and the tall slender figure are just like his.”
“How singular!” she exclaimed, in a low tone to herself. “How strangely things come about!”