By his manner I saw that he was in possession of information of no ordinary character.
He paused, and slowly twisted his small dark moustache, at last admitting——
“Yes, Ralph, I have.”
“What have you discovered?” I cried, in fierce eagerness. “Tell me the result of your inquiries regarding Ethelwynn. It is her connection with the affair which occupies my chief thoughts.”
“For the present, my dear fellow, we must leave her entirely out of it,” my friend said quietly. “To tell you the truth, after announcing my intention to give up the affair as a mystery impenetrable, I set to work and slowly formed a theory. Then I drew up a deliberate plan of campaign, which I carried out in its entirety.”
“And the result?”
“Its result—” he laughed. “Well, when I’d spent several anxious weeks in making the most careful inquiries, I found, to my chagrin, that I was upon an entirely wrong scent, and that the person I suspected of being the assassin at Kew was innocent. There was no help for it but to begin all over again, and I did so. My inquiries then led me in an entirely opposite direction. I followed my new and somewhat startling theory, and found to my satisfaction that I had at length struck the right trail. Through a whole fortnight I worked on night and day, often snatching a few hours of sleep in railway carriages, and sometimes watching through the whole night—for when one pursues inquiries alone it is frequently imperative to keep watchful vigil. To Bath, to Hereford, to Edinburgh, to Birmingham, to Newcastle, and also to several places far distant in the South of England I travelled in rapid succession, until at last I found a clue, but one so extraordinary that at first I could not give it credence. Ten days have passed, and even now I refuse to believe that such a thing could be. I’m absolutely bewildered by it.”
“Then you believe that you’ve at last gained the key to the mystery?” I said, eagerly drinking in his words.
“It seems as though I have. Yet my information is so very vague and shadowy that I can really form no decisive opinion. It is this mysterious death of Mrs. Courtenay that has utterly upset all my theories. Tell me plainly, Ralph, what causes you to suspect foul play? This is not a time for prevarication. We must be open and straightforward to each other. Tell me the absolute truth.”
Should I tell him frankly of the amazing discovery I had made? I feared to do so, lest he should laugh me to scorn. The actual existence of Courtenay seemed too incredible. And yet as he was working to solve the problem, just as I was, there seemed every reason why we should be aware of each other’s discoveries. We had both pursued independent inquiries into the Seven Secrets until that moment, and it was now high time we compared results.