"He may have been a Mr. Gregory, but he certainly was not Mr. Vernon Gregory, the steel manufacturer," responded Treeton, calmly.
"Well, that beats everything!" she gasped. "Then that old man was a humbugging impostor—eh?"
"So it seems," Frayne replied.
"But it can't be true? I can't believe it! He was a real gentleman. See, here, what he had got put away in that old box of his. Them there Sheffield police is mistook, I'm sure they be. There'll be some good explanation of all this, I'll be bound, if 'tis looked for."
"I sincerely hope so," I remarked. "But at present I certainly don't see any."
Truth to tell, I was utterly staggered and confounded, the more so, by that report from Sheffield. I confess I had all along believed old Gregory to be what he had represented himself as being to the people of Cromer.
Now I realized that I was face to face with a profound and amazing problem—one which those provincial police-officers, patient and well-meaning as they were, could never hope to solve.
Yes, old Vernon Gregory was an impostor. The reply from the Sheffield police proved that beyond a doubt. Therefore, it also followed that the man lying dead was certainly not what he had represented himself to be—nephew of the great steel magnate.
But who was he? That was the present great question that baffled us.
The photograph I held in my hand bore the name: "Callard, Photographer, Shepherd's Bush Road." But I knew that whatever inquiries were made at that address, the result would be negative. The mysterious Lola was an elusive little person, not at all likely to betray her identity to any photographer.