Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.
A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the neighbourhood of King's Cross.
Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent beyond his station, but he had not forgathered much with his fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on the part of his daily associates.
Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the suicide in No. 10 Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had identified the dead body as that of her brother.
Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.
Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London; at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.
And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the world any longer.
A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate Reginald Davis who had stolen into No. 10 Cathcart Square and committed suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.
The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of his sister's flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation till he had finished. Then she spoke.
"Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed." She was, of course, alluding to the confession of the real murderer. "Now you are as free as air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal to that extent."