“I’ve heard it said,” said Lawyer Bain, “that it grows faster than in life.”
“And that it grows, not only on the head, but on the face as well?”
“The face! A woman’s face?” exclaimed Sedgwick.
“No; a man’s.”
“What man?”
“The man in the coffin.”
“Have you lost your mind, Chet? The body in the coffin was that of the woman who met me at the entrance to the Nook.”
“No. It was the body of the man who, dressed in woman’s clothing, met you at the Nook, and knocked you down with a stone flung overhand as not one woman in a thousand could have thrown it. That, in itself, ought to have suggested the secret to me, long before I discovered it.”
“But how did you discover it?” inquired Sedgwick in bewilderment; “since you didn’t see the growth of beard on the dead face yourself?”
“By the cut on the cheek. You see, the sheriff had failed to foresee that telltale beard. So, when in deference to Mr. Bain’s protest against burial without a formal view of the body, they opened up the casket and saw the obvious change in the face, there was nothing for the officials to do but remedy their carelessness. They had the body taken to the house, and did the best they could. That cut on the cheek was a razor cut. Having realized that much, I had to deal thenceforth with the mystery of a dead man masquerading as a woman, and being abetted in the deception by the officers of the law—”