"That is true," said Cleek quietly. "There is not any question of Mademoiselle Fifi's complete innocence of any connection with this murder."
"Then her husband?" ventured Captain Crawford agitatedly. "Surely you have heard what Mrs. Brinkworth has said about seeing him in town to-day?"
"Yes, I have heard, Captain. But it so happens that I know for a certainty M. Philippe de Lesparre had no more to do with it than had his wife."
"But, my dear sir," interposed the colonel; "the—er—foreign person at the station, the little slim man in the Norfolk suit, the fellow with the little dark moustache? What of him?"
"A great deal of him. But there are other men who are slight, other men who have little dark moustaches, Colonel. That description would answer for Captain Crawford here; and if he, too, were in town to-day——"
"I was in town!" blurted out the captain, a sudden tremor in his voice, a sudden pallor showing through his tan. "But, good God, man! you—you can't possibly insinuate——"
"No, I do not," interposed Cleek. "Set your mind at
rest upon that point, Captain; for the simple reason that the little dark man is a little dark fiction; in other words, he does not and never did exist!"
"What's that?" fairly gasped Narkom. "Never existed? But, my dear Cleek, you told me that the porter at London Bridge saw him and——"
"I told you what the porter told me; what the porter thought he saw, and what we shall, no doubt, find out in time at least fifty other people thought they saw, and what was, doubtless, the 'good joke' alluded to in the forged note. The only man against whom we need direct our attention, the only man who had any hand in this murder, is a big, burly, strong-armed one like Colonel Murchison here."