“Robert Redmayne?”

Peter broke off for a brief exposition.  He took snuff, shut his eyes and began.

“Why do you harp on ‘Robert Redmayne,’ like a parrot, my son?  Just consider all I’ve said on that matter and the general subject of forgeries for a minute.  You can forge anything that man ever made, and a good few things that God has made.  You can forge a picture, a postage stamp, a signature, a finger print; and our human minds, accustomed to pictures, postage stamps, finger prints, are easily deceived by appearances and seldom possess the necessary expert knowledge to recognize a forgery when we see it.  And now we are dealing with people who have forged a human being, for that is what the red man amounts to.

“Didn’t you do the same thing last week?  Didn’t you forge yourself and leave yourself dead on the ground?  Whether the real Robert Redmayne is actually a stiff, we can’t yet swear, though for my part I am pretty well prepared to prove it; but this I do know, that the man who shot at you and missed you and ran away was not Robert Redmayne.”

Brendon demurred.  “Remember, I’m not a stranger to him, Ganns.  I saw and spoke with him by the pool in Foggintor Quarry before the murder.”

“What of it?  You’ve never spoken with him since; and, what’s more, you’ve never seen him since, either.  You’ve seen a forgery.  It was a forgery that looked at you on your way back to Dartmouth in the moonlight.  It was a forgery that robbed the farm for food and lived in the cave and cut Bendigo Redmayne’s throat.  It was a forgery that tried to shoot you and missed.”

Mr. Ganns took snuff again and continued.

But as the course of his inquiries belong to the terrible culmination of the mystery and cannot here be told with their just significance, it will suffice to record that Brendon presently found his brain reeling before a theory so extravagant that he would instantly have discredited it from any lesser lips than those of the famous man who propounded them.

“Mind,” concluded Peter, who had spoken without ceasing for nearly two hours, “I’m not saying that I am right.  I’m only saying that, wild though it sounds, it fits and makes a logical story even though that story beats all experience.  It might have happened; and if it didn’t happen, then I’m damned if I know what did, or what is happening at this moment.  It is a horrible thing, if true; but it’s a beautiful thing from the professional point of view—­just as a cancer, or a battle, or an earthquake can be beautiful when put in a category outside humanity.”

Brendon delayed his answer and his face was racked with many poignant emotions.

“I can’t believe it,” he replied at length, in a voice which indicated the extent of his mental amazement and perturbation; “but I shall nevertheless do exactly as you direct.  That is well within my power and obviously my duty.”

“Good boy.  And now we’ll have something to eat.  You’ve got it clear?  The time is all important.”