I referred to it; whereupon Ambler Jevons drew from his breast-pocket two photographs, and, holding them before the eyes of the trembling old man, said:
“You recognise these? For a long time past I’ve been making inquiries into your keen interest in amateur theatricals. My information led me to Curtis’s, the wigmakers; and they furnished me with this picture, showing you made up as as Henry Courtenay. It seems that, under the name of Slade, you furnished them with a portrait of the dead man and ordered the disguise to be copied exactly—a fact to which a dozen witnesses are prepared to swear. This caused me to wonder what game you were playing, and, after watching, I found that on certain nights you wore the disguise—a most complete and excellent one—and with it imposed upon the unfortunate widow of weak intellect. You posed as her husband, and she believed you to be him. So completely was the woman in your thrall that you actually led her to believe that Courtenay was not dead after all! You had a deeper game to play. It was a clever and daring piece of imposture. Representing yourself as her husband who, for financial reasons, had been compelled to disappear and was believed to be dead, you had formed a plan whereby to obtain the widow’s fortune as soon as the executors had given her complete mastery of it. You had arranged it all with her. She was to pose as a widow, mourn your loss, and then sell the Devonshire estate and hand you the money, believing you to be her husband and rightly entitled to it. The terrible crime which the unfortunate woman had committed at your instigation had turned her brain, as you anticipated, and she, docile and half-witted, was entirely beneath your influence until——” and he paused.
“Until what?” I asked, utterly astounded at this remarkable explanation of what I had considered to be an absolutely inexplicable phenomenon.
He spoke again, quite calmly:
“Until this man, to his dismay, found that poor Mrs. Courtenay’s intellect was regaining its strength. They met beside the river, and, her brain suddenly regaining its balance, she discovered the ingenious fraud he was imposing upon her.” Turning to Sir Bernard, he said, “She tore off your disguise and declared that she would go to the police and tell the truth of the whole circumstances—how that you had induced her to go to the house in Kew and kill her husband. You saw that your game was up if she were not silenced; therefore, without further ado, you sent the poor woman to her last account.”
“You lie!” the old man cried, his drawn face blanched to the lips. “She fell in—accidentally.”
“She did not. You threw her in,” declared Ambler Jevons, firmly. “I followed you there. I was witness of the scene between you; and, although too far off to save poor Mrs. Courtenay, I was witness of your crime!”
“You!” he gasped, glaring at my companion in fear, as though he foresaw the horror of his punishment.
“Yes!” responded Jevons, in his dry, matter-of-fact voice, his sleepy eyes brightening for a moment. “Since the day of the tragedy at Kew until this afternoon I have never relinquished the inquiry. The Seven Secrets I took one by one, and gradually penetrated them, at the same time keeping always near you and watching your movements when you least expected it. But enough—I never reveal my methods. Suffice it to say that in this I have succeeded by sheer patience and application. Every word of my allegation I am prepared to substantiate in due course at the Old Bailey.” Then, after a second’s pause, he looked straight at the culprit standing there, crushed and dumb before him, and declared: “Sir Bernard Eyton, you are a murderer!”
With my love’s hand held in mine I stood speechless at those staggering revelations. I saw how Ethelwynn watched the contortions of the old doctor’s face with secret satisfaction, for he had ever been her enemy, just as he had been mine. He had uttered those libellous hints regarding her with a view to parting us, so as to give him greater freedom to work his will with poor Mary. Then, when he had feared that through my love I had obtained knowledge of his dastardly offence, he had made an attempt upon my life by means of hired ruffians. The woman who had been in his drawing-room at Hove on the occasion of my visit was Mary, as I afterwards found out, and the attractive young person in the Brighton train had also been a caller at his house in connection with the attempt planned to be made upon me.