mond Town evaporated that
night."

Saxham said, with his grim under-jaw thrust out:

"Surely that circumstance, when reported to the Officer commanding the
Garrison, might then have awakened his suspicions?"

"Naturally," agreed Bingo, "and therefore he kept 'em dark. As for my
wife, the shock of the murder, accompanied with her own secret conviction
that, in some indirect way, she'd helped to set a malicious, lurking,
watchful, dangerous Force of some kind working against your wife--when
she dropped that hint I've told you of--bowled her over with a nervous
fever."

"I remember," said Saxham, who had been called in.

"Consequently, it wasn't until some days after the Relief--a bare hour or
two before the Division--Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, and a
company or so of Civilian Johnnies that had made believe they were genuine
fightin' Tommies till they couldn't get out of the notion--marched out of
Gueldersdorp for Frostenberg, that her ladyship got a chance of makin' a
clean breast to the Chief. Hold on a minute, Doctor----"

For Saxham would have spoken.

"--The Chief had had his own private opinion, from the very first. He
heard what my wife had to say. As you may guess, she'd worked herself up
into a regular cooker of remorse and anxiety--told him she was ready to go
anywhere and do anything--he'd only got to give her orders, and all that
sort of thing! He charged her with the simple but difficult role of
holdin' her tongue, and keepin' her oar out, and findin' him--if by good
luck she'd got it by her--a specimen of the handwritin' of the clever
scoundrel who'd played at bein' a War Intelligence Agent, and waltzed with
her five hundred pounds, which sample, as it chanced, she was able to
supply. And the fist of the man who'd swindled her, and the writin' of the
Mrs. Casey who'd sent a letter per despatch-runner from Diamond Town to a
husband who didn't exist, tallied to an upstroke and the crossin' of a
'_t_'!"

"Is it beyond doubt that the letter from the supposed Mrs. Casey was not a
genuine communication?" Saxham asked.

"Beyond doubt. As a fact, the neatly-directed envelope had simply got a
sheet of blank paper inside. Another odd fact brought to light was, that
the person who communicated with my wife at the Convalescent Hospital
about half-past twelve on the day of the murder, rang her up on the
telephone belongin' to the orderly-room at the Headquarters of the
Baraland Rifles. We had up the or