Not one sure fact clashed with the possibility.

"Nothing at present was positively known by me which made it out of
the question that Joseph Pendean's wife should be the mother of
Giuseppe Doria. But none the less many facts might exist as yet
beyond my knowledge, which would prove such a suspicion vain. I
considered how to obtain these facts and naturally my thought turned
to Giuseppe himself. To show you by what faltering steps we
sometimes climb to safe ground, I may say that at this stage of my
inquiry I had not imagined Doria and Michael Pendean were one and
the same person. That was to come. For the moment I conceived of the
possibility that Madame Pendean, a lady who had caused some
fluttering in the Wesleyan dovecots of Penzance, might by chance
have been the mother of a second son in her native country. I
imagined that Michael and an Italian half brother might know each
other, and that the two were working together to destroy the
brothers Redmayne, so that Michael's wife should inherit all the
family money.

"Having found out what Penzance could tell me, I beat it up to
Dartmouth, because I was exceedingly anxious to learn, if possible,
the exact date when Giuseppe Doria entered the employment of Bendigo
Redmayne as motor boatman. Albert's brother hadn't any friends that
I could find; but I traced his doctor and, though he was not in a
position to enlighten me, he knew another man--an innkeeper at
Tor-cross, some miles away on the coast--who might be familiar with
this vital date.

"Mr. Noah Blades proved a very shrewd and capable chap. Bendigo
Redmayne had known him well, and it was after spending a week at the
Tor-cross Hotel with Blades and going fishing in his motor boat,
that the old sailor had decided to start one himself at 'Crow's
Nest.' He did so and his first boatman was a failure. Then he
advertised for another and received a good many applications. He'd
sailed with Italians and liked them on a ship, and he decided for
Giuseppe Doria, whose testimonials appeared to be exceptional. The
man came along and, two days after his arrival, ran Bendigo down to
Tor-cross in his launch to see Blades.

"Redmayne, of course, was full of the murder at Princetown, which
had just occurred, and the tragedy proved so interesting that Blades
had little time to notice the new motor boatman. But what matters is
that we know it was on the day after the murder--on the very day
Bendigo heard what his brother, Robert,