“I do not,” he replied. “My knowledge of the facts of this case is nearly all second-hand knowledge, derived from you. You know all that I know and probably more.”
“That is all very well, Sir,” said I; “but you foresaw that this was likely to happen. I didn’t. Therefore you must know more about the case than I do.”
He chuckled softly. “You are confusing knowledge and inference,” said he. “We had the same facts, but our inferences were not the same. It is just a matter of experience. You haven’t squeezed out of the facts as much as they are capable of yielding. Come, now, Gray; while I am finishing my work you shall look over my notes of this case, and then you should take a sort of bird’s-eye view of the whole case, and see if anything new occurs to you. And you must add to those notes that this man has been at the enormous trouble of stalking you continuously, that he shadowed you to Usher’s, that he waited patiently for you to come out, that he followed you most skilfully, and took instant advantage of the first opportunity that you gave him. You might also note that he did not elect to overtake you and make a direct attack on you, as he did on Miss D’Arblay. Note those facts, and consider what their significance may be. And now just go through this little dossier. It won’t take you many minutes.”
He took out of a drawer a small portfolio, on the cover of which was written, “J. D’Arblay, dec’d.,” and, passing it to me, returned to his documents. I opened it and found it to contain a number of separate abstracts, each duly headed with its descriptive title, and an envelope marked, “Photographs.” Glancing over the abstracts, I saw that they dealt respectively with J. D’Arblay, The Inquest, The Van Zellen Case, Miss D’Arblay, Dr. Gray, and Mr. Morris; the last containing, somewhat to my surprise, all the details that I had given Thorndyke respecting that rather mysterious person, together with an account of my dealings with him and cross-references to the abstract bearing my name. It was all very complete and methodical, but none of the abstracts contained any information that was new to me. If this represented all the facts that were known to Thorndyke, then he was no better informed than I was. But he had evidently got a great deal more out of the information than I had.
Returning the abstracts with some disappointment to the portfolio, I turned to the photographs; and then I got a very thorough surprise. There were only three, and the first two were of no great interest, one representing the two casts of the guinea and the other the plaster mask of Morris. But the third fairly took away my breath. It was a very bad photograph, apparently an enlargement from a rather poor snap-shot portrait; but, bad as it was, it gave a very vivid presentment of one of the most evil-looking faces that I have ever looked on; a lean, bearded face, with high cheek-bones, with heavy, frowning brows that overhung deep-shadowed, hollow eye-sockets and an almost grotesquely large nose, thin, curved, and sharp, that jutted out like a great predatory beak.
I stared at the photograph in speechless amazement. At the first glance I had been struck by the perfect way in which this crude portrait realized Marion’s description of the man who had tried to murder her. But that was not all. There was another resemblance which I now perceived with even more astonishment; indeed, it was so incredible that the perception of it reduced me to something like stupefaction. I sat for fully a minute with the portrait in my hand, and my thoughts surging confusedly in a vain effort to grasp the meaning of this extraordinary likeness; then, happening to glance up at Thorndyke, I found him quietly regarding me with undisguised interest.
“Well,” he said, as he caught my eye.
“Who is he?” I demanded, holding up the photograph.
“That is what I want to know,” he replied. “The photograph came to me without any description. The identity of the subject is unknown. Who do you think he is?”
“To begin with,” I answered, “he exactly corresponds in appearance with Miss D’Arblay’s description of her would-be murderer. Don’t you think so?’