“It beats the band. You are my cousin Roger right enough, and this is a nice dramatic meeting. Drury Lane isn’t in it with us, though what the blazes you are doing as a ‘Mounter’ beats me. I thought you were at the bar.”
“And I didn’t know you were Koona Dick until three nights ago. I had your description given me, and that cut across your cheek bone was particularized. That and the beard you wear are acquisitions since the old days at Harrow Fell, and even when I looked at your face the other night I never associated Koona Dick with Dick Bracknell.”
“How did you come to know?” asked the other curiously.
“I picked up that note which you sent to your wife asking her to meet you, and naming the place. You had begun to write your surname and then crossed it out. That gave me the first inkling that you and Koona Dick were one and the same, and of course when I talked to Joy Gargrave I knew that what I suspected was the fact.”
“And knowing what you now know, you would still arrest me?”
As he asked the question, Dick Bracknell leaned forward a little, and the hand that held the pistol hung loosely over the edge of the bunk. The corporal noticed it, and shifted his grip on the heavy fur cap in his hand.
“I should be compelled to. Duty is duty—you know.”
“But, man, I’m your cousin!” came the protest.
“Yes! more’s the pity.”