After a pause and a long silence, while the train sped through the darkness of the Simplon tunnel, Peter retraced the steps by which he had been enabled to solve the riddle of the Redmaynes.

“I told you that you had not begun at the beginning,” he said.  “It’s really all summed up in that.  You occupied an extraordinary position.  The criminal himself, in the pride of his craft and by reason of the consuming vanity that finally wrecked him, deliberately brought you in.  It was part of his fun—­his art if you like—­that he should involve a great detective for the added joy of making a fool of him.  You were the spice in his bloody cup for Michael Pendean—­the salt, the zest.  If he had merely stuck to business, not a thousand detectives would ever have queered his pitch.  But he was as playful as any other hunting tiger.  He rejoiced in adding a thousand details to his original scheme.  He was an artist, but too florid, too decadent in his decorations.  And so he ruined what might have been the crime of the century.  It is just the touch of human fallibility that has brought Nemesis to many a great criminal.

“The machinery he employed focussed attention from the first on the apparent murderer rather than his victim.  It appeared impossible to doubt what had happened and Pendean’s death was assumed but never proved.  Particulars concerning Robert Redmayne were abundant; yet, during the whole course of the official inquiry, none was forthcoming concerning the supposed victim.  Of him you had heard from his wife; and her original statement to you at Princetown—­when she invited you, doubtless at Pendean’s direction, to take up the case—­was masterly because so nearly true in every respect.

“But from the time that I met and spoke with Albert’s niece I began to reflect upon that statement, and my speedy conviction was this:  that a great deal more concerning Jenny’s first husband demanded to be known.  Do not suppose that I was on the track of the truth at that period.  Far from it.  I only desired more data and regarded the history of Michael Pendean as being of doubtful value, since his wife alone was responsible for the details.  It seemed to me absolutely necessary to learn more than she was prepared to tell.  I had questioned her, but found her either ignorant of much concerning him—­or else purposely evasive.  Of her three uncles, only Robert had ever seen Michael Pendean.  Neither Bendigo nor dear Albert had set eyes on him; and that fact, though of no significance at first, of course, became very significant indeed at a later stage of my study.

“I went first to Penzance and devoted several days to learning all possible particulars of the Pendean family.  On examining Michael Pendean’s ancestry, as a preliminary to finding out everything remembered of Pendean himself, I at once made a highly important discovery.  Joseph Pendean, Michael’s father, was often in Italy on his pilchard business for the firm, and he married an Italian woman.  She lived with her husband at Penzance and bore him one son, and a daughter who died in infancy.  The lady seems to have given cause for a certain amount of scandal, for her Latin temperament and lively ways did not commend themselves to the rather austere and religious circle in which her husband and his relations moved.