to do some shopping and, visiting Burnell’s the theatrical costumer, she purchased a red wig for a woman.  At home again she transferred it into a red wig for a man.  Meantime I had made a pair of large mustaches, helping myself when Mrs. Gerry, our landlady, was out of the way to hair from the brush of one of her stuffed foxes, whose colour exactly resembled the rufous adornments of Robert Redmayne.  That was all I wanted.  The rest of my disguise would go to the quarry on the person of Robert himself.

But other things went to the quarry also, for I had to look far ahead.  When we started on his motor cycle, after tea, to do some work at the bungalow, I took a handbag containing my costume as Giuseppe Doria—­a plain, blue serge suit, coat, waistcoat and trousers and yachtsman’s cap.  I also carried a tool—­the little instrument with which I murdered the three Redmaynes.  It resembled the head of a butcher’s pole-axe, of great weight with the working end sharpened.  I made it in a forge at Southampton and it lies to-day under the waters of Como.  My bag I had taken on previous occasions to the quarry, with a bottle of whisky and glasses, so Robert thought it not strange that I should do so again.

We started for Foggintor and it was still broad daylight when we got there.  I had already studied the quarry and determined on Robert Redmayne’s resting-place.  You will find him—­and the suit of clothes I was wearing that evening—­in the moraine, where it opens fanwise from the cliff above and spreads into the bottom beneath.  On the right, at its base, water eternally drips from the ledges of the granite and here, two feet beneath the surface, he doubtless still lies.  The falling water smooths the slope and the earth descends daily to increase the volume of granite sand and gravel above him.  The drip must swiftly have washed away any trace of my handiwork and, even with these directions, it may be hard to find him.

Arrived at the bungalow, Robert’s first demand was a bath in the quarry pool.  To this I had accustomed him and we stripped and swam for ten minutes.  You will perceive the value of this operation.  His clothes were ready for me without speck or blemish; and when we returned from the pool into the shelter of the bungalow it was a naked man I smote and dropped with one blow of my formidable weapon.  His back was turned and the pole-axe head went through his skull like butter.  He was dead before I cut his throat, put on my shoes and hastened, naked, to the moraine with a spade.

I opened the grave under the falling water and dug two feet into the loose stuff, for that was deep enough.  Then I carried him and my clothes from the bungalow, interred them, heaped back the soil and left the eternal percolations from above to do the rest.  By the following morning it had demanded very keen eyes to discover any disturbance at that spot even had search been instituted at Foggintor.  But I did not desire a search and my subsequent measures prevented it.  A Ganns might have discovered clues, no doubt; a Brendon was more easily deluded.