"Wigan, get some one who knows Beverley to go and look at the dead pierrot. The result might be interesting."
It was. Quarles admitted that the idea was a leap in the dark, but he pointed out that the dead man was the type he imagined Beverley to be. The fact remains he was right. The dead man was Beverley. And, moreover, the professor's deduction was right throughout as far as we were able to verify it. Watson had been in prison, quite deservedly he admitted, but having paid the debt for his fall, he was facing the world bravely. Then came Beverley, who knew of the past, and Watson admitted that his death was a thing that he could not help rejoicing over. He had heard nothing from Henley, who had no doubt read of the discovery in the paper, and thought it wiser to obliterate himself altogether.
CHAPTER VI
THE TRAGEDY IN DUKE'S MANSIONS
I believe Beverley's exit from this life was a relief to his family. Whether any very strenuous efforts were made to find Henley, I do not know. Possibly the "Classical P's" are interrogated concerning him from time to time, for they are still appearing at well-known watering places, though whether Miss Day is still of the company, I cannot say.
I quickly forgot all about Henley, being absorbed in a new case, which created considerable attention. At the outset it brought me in contact with rather a fascinating character, a man whose personality sticks in your memory.
He was an Italian by birth, cosmopolitan by circumstances, and by nature something of an artist. Fate had ordained that he should be man-servant to an English M.P.; he would have looked more at home in a Florentine studio or in a Tuscany vineyard, but then Fate is responsible for many incongruities.
In well-chosen words, and in dramatic fashion, he drew the picture for me.
"The little dinner was over," he said, using his hands to illustrate his speech. "I had removed everything but the wine. It had not been a merry party, no; it was all business, I think, and serious. When I enter the room to bring this or take that, they pause, say something of no consequence—evidently I am not to hear anything of what they are talking. They talk English, though only my master was English. One of his guests was German, the other a countryman of my own, but not of Tuscany, no, I think of the South. So there was only the wine on the table, and cigars, and the silver box of cigarettes. My master had in his hand a sheet of paper, and the German had taken a map from his pocket, and my countryman was laughing at something which amused him. I can see it all just as it was."
He paused, closed his eyes, as if he would impress for ever on his memory what he had seen.