“For my part,” he said, “it is an ill wind that blows good to nobody.  I am anxious to go to London if there is no objection.”

He found himself detained, however, for some days, until an official examination of the strange problem was completed.  The investigation achieved nothing and threw no ray of light, either upon the apparent murder of Bendigo Redmayne, or the disappearance of his brother.  The original mystery at Foggintor Quarry was recalled, to fill the minds of the morbid and curious; but no sort of connecting motive between the two crimes appeared and the problem of Robert Redmayne only grew darker.  All purpose was lacking from both tragedies, while even the facts themselves remained in doubt, since neither incident furnished a dead body to prove murder against the missing man.

Mr. Albert Redmayne stayed no longer in Devonshire than his duty indicated, for he could prove of no service to the police.  On the night previous to his departure he went through his brother’s scanty library and found nothing in it of any interest to a collector.  The ancient and well-thumbed copy of “Moby Dick” he took for sentiment, and he also directed Jenny to pack for him Bendigo’s “Log”—­a diary in eight or ten volumes.  This he proposed to read at his leisure when home again.  To the end of his visit he never ceased to lament the absence of Mr. Peter Ganns.

“My friend is actually coming to Europe next year,” he explained.  “He is, without doubt, the most accomplished of men in the dreadful science of detecting crime and, were he here, he could assuredly read into these abominations a meaning for which we grope in vain.  Do not think,” he added to Jenny, “that I undervalue the labours of Mr. Brendon and the police, but they have come to naught, for there are strange forces of evil moving here deeper than the plummet of their intelligence can sound.”

He departed, assured that his family was the victim of some evil, concealed alike from himself and everybody else; but he promised Jenny that he would presently write to America and lay every incident of the case, so far as it was known and reported, before his friend.

“He will bring a new intelligence to bear upon the tragedy,” said Albert.  “He will see things that are hidden from us, for his brain has a quality which one can only describe as a mental X-ray, which probes and penetrates in a fashion denied to ordinary thinking apparatus.”

Before he returned to the borders of Como and his little villa beneath the mountains, the old scholar took affectionate leave of Jenny and made her promise to follow him as soon as she was able to do so.

He had failed to observe the emotional bonds that united her to Doria; but he had found Giuseppe an attractive personality and welcomed the Italian’s good sense and tact under distressing circumstances.  He made him a present of money before leaving and promised him testimonials if he should need them.  As for Jenny, she was to enjoy the bequest under her grandfather’s will when she desired to do so, while for her future, her uncle trusted that she would make her home with him.