"Naturally," replied Thorndyke, "my suggestion implies that the person who was with her was not Jeffrey Blackmore."
"But he was!" bawled Winwood. "The porter saw him!"
"The porter saw a person whom he believed to be Jeffrey Blackmore. I suggest that the porter's belief was erroneous."
"Well," snapped Winwood, "perhaps you can prove that it was. I don't see how you are going to; but perhaps you can."
He subsided once more into his chair and glared defiantly at Thorndyke.
"You seemed," said Stephen, "to suggest some connection between the sick man, Graves, and my uncle. I noted it at the time, but put it aside as impossible. Was I right. Did you mean to suggest any connection?"
"I suggest something more than a connection. I suggest identity. My position is that the sick man, Graves, was your uncle."
"From Dr. Jervis's description," said Stephen, "this man must have been very like my uncle. Both were blind in the right eye and had very poor vision with the left; and my uncle certainly used brushes of the kind that you have shown us, when writing in the Japanese character, for I have watched him and admired his skill; but—"
"But," said Marchmont, "there is the insuperable objection that, at the very time when this man was lying sick in Kennington Lane, Mr. Jeffrey was living at New Inn."
"What evidence is there of that?" asked Thorndyke.