"Yes, an impostor," said Cleek quietly. "I recognized him directly I was able to get face to face with him. He was known as Paul the Panther, though Paul Berton is his name, an Apache, a boon companion of Margot, the queen of the Apaches, and of Anatole de Villon, a cousin of the greatest scoundrel in Paris. This man Paul had been valet to the real Lord St. Ulmer, probably engaged in Paris, and went with him to the Argentine. With him also Paul took the effects and credentials of another Apache, Ferdinand Lovetski, the maker of that special blacking, 'Jetanola.' He had been killed for refusing to give up to the Apaches his little fortune, and accordingly, Anatole annexed it without the permission of Margot, and hence brought down on him her wrath. He managed to slip away with his master, and whether he had any hand in killing him in the Argentine, heaven alone knows. What is certain is that he decided to return to Europe and finally to England as Lord St. Ulmer, and in this he succeeded. The old solicitor had died. Both you and your wife had seen but little of St. Ulmer in later years, so that, armed with all the papers and his own quick wits, it was not so difficult as you would have imagined. Had it not been for the stray meeting with Anatole de Villon, who was himself masquerading here as the Count de Louvisan, all would have gone well. As it was, one rogue threatened the other, and De Louvisan held the trump cards. It was his plan to marry Lady Katharine, and St. Ulmer had to submit, for fear not only that he should be betrayed to the police as an impostor, but in case Anatole should give him up to Margot. He played on Lady Katharine's feelings, therefore, so as to make her give up young Clavering and marry the count. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, at the last minute De Louvisan quarrelled with him; he had some other plans, he said, connected with letters——"
"Good heavens! I see now," gasped the General. "De Louvisan played a double game. Those letters were mine. He had contrived to steal them from me in Malta. There is really no harm in them, but Marise—Lady Clavering—and I, had fancied ourselves in love many years ago, and she was afraid, needlessly perhaps, that Sir Philip Clavering, who is the very soul of honour himself, would disown her and cut the friendship between him and myself. We had each found our true mates, and it was an unutterable shock to both to find that this wretch had threatened to inform Sir Philip, or else hand over the letters to Margot to publish at her will. I nearly went mad when Marise told me that she was going to meet him. I think I went off my head for a few minutes; at any rate, I did one of those unaccountable things for which people who have mental lapses are noted. It was after bedtime, long after, when the message arrived, and struck all my thoughts into a bewildering sort of chaos. I remember hanging up the receiver and turning to the door, but from that moment there is a blank until I found myself standing before the dressing mirror in my own room, not in the act of disrobing, as I ought properly to have been doing at that hour and in that place, but dressing myself as if for dinner! I think you are aware of the fact that I use black cosmetic on my moustache, Mr. Cleek? When that mental lapse passed and I came to myself, there I was with my hair freshly combed and in the very act of applying the cosmetic to my moustache. I don't know how I got into the room or when—everything is a blank to me.
"A not unusual thing under the circumstances, General. These sudden shocks produce effects of that sort frequently. You were not really accountable, not really aware of what you did, or why—that, I suppose, is the explanation of how, when you came to think of going to the cottage and facing the man, you ran out of the house with the stick of cosmetic still in your hand. You did, did you not?"
"Yes, although I was not aware of it until I arrived at the place."
"Hum-m-m! So I imagined. And the A-string? How did you come to take that?"
"The A-string, Mr. Cleek?"
"Yes, the bit of catgut. Shall I be out in my reckoning, General, if I say that as you crept out of the house something fell either on your head or your hands, something which proved to be a long thick piece of catgut, and that, without realizing what you were doing, or why, you carried that, too, with you?"
"Good heavens, how do you know these things? Nobody, nobody on God's earth could have told you that, Mr. Cleek, for no living soul was there. But that is exactly what did happen. When I got into the cottage and found Lady Clavering——"
"With a pink gauze petticoat under a pale green satin dress?"
"Yes. When I got there and found her in conversation with that wretch, why, those two things—the cosmetic and the catgut—were still in my hand. I had no use for them, of course, and as soon as I realized that I was holding them I threw them aside."