“That’s Jack!” he exclaimed wildly. “I have no hesitation in identifying him!”
Monsieur Meunier turned to the back of the large unmounted photograph, and read what was written there as follows:
“An unknown. Supposed to be English. Discovered at 7.10 a.m., on October 28th, behind a small pottery factory, a mile from the village of St. Uze, close to Valence, Department of the Drôme. The medical examination showed the person to have died from some vegetable poison. It is believed that he was deposited at the spot during the night from a passing car. No arrest has been made. Any details of identification to be sent to the Prefect of the Drôme.”
Three days later Geoffrey arrived at Charing Cross accompanied by an agent of the Paris Sûreté, who at once applied for the arrest and extradition of the adventurer, Gilbert Farrer.
This took place when Farrer called at Mr. Evenden’s office next day—and two months later, at his trial before the Assizes of the Seine, the clever assassin who had stolen poor Jack Halliday’s secret was sentenced to penal servitude for life.
At the present moment he is still in the convict prison at Lyons, while his friend Beryl and “Daddy” Whittaker, who were both deeply implicated in the plot, were each sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude at the Old Bailey.
The great Berenice Gold Mine is being worked with huge success, but the profits which should have been poor Jack’s are being paid regularly to his widowed mother, who lives in seclusion in Pembrokeshire, deeply mourning the loss of one of the finest and bravest of Englishmen.