To be able to clear away clouds is a great thing. Besides this, Elsie had found out what the rest had failed to find out—and by the simplest method. She had learned from the only person who knew at what hour she should be most likely to find the mysterious Edmund Gray, and she had then waited on the stairs until he came. No method more direct—yet nobody thought of it except herself. She had done it. As the result, there was no longer any mystery. The man who forged the first cheque: the man who wrote those letters and conducted their transfer: was, as they all thought at first, Edmund Gray. No other. And Edmund Gray was Edward Dering, one and the same person—and Edward Dering was a Madman, and this discovery it was which so profoundly impressed her. There were no confederates: there was no one wanted to intercept the post: no one had tampered with the safe: the Chief himself had received the letters and conducted the correspondence alternately as Edmund Gray himself, or Edmund Gray acting unconsciously for Edward Dering.
Perfectly impossible— Perfectly simple— Perfectly intelligible. As for the impossibility, a fact may remain when its impossibility is established. Elsie was not a psychologist or a student of the brain. She knew nothing about mental maladies. She only said after what she had seen and heard: 'The man is mad.'
Then she thought how she should best act. To establish the identity of Mr. Dering and Edmund Gray must be done. It was the one thing necessary. Very well. That could easily be done, and in a simple way. She had only to march into his office at the head of a small band of witnesses and say: 'You wanted us to find out Edmund Gray! I have found him. And thou art the man!'
He would deny it. He certainly knew nothing about it. Then she would call upon her witnesses. First, Athelstan's commissionaire, who declared that he should remember, even after eight years or eighty years, the gentleman who sent him to cash that cheque. 'Who is this man, commissionaire?'
'That is Mr. Edmund Gray.'
Next the landlord of his chambers. 'Who is this man?'
'That is Mr. Edmund Gray, my tenant for nine years.'
Then she would call the eminent Barrister, Mr. Langhorne. 'Do you know this man?'
'He is my neighbour, Mr. Edmund Gray.'
And Freddy Carstone the Coach.