and security wrecked all. Had Albert
slept beneath the waters of Como before Ganns arrived, then not the
wit of twenty Peters had ever found him; but while no man living
could have saved the life of Redmayne, since had I determined to
take it, the predestined sequel to his death was confounded by my
own error. Once more Ganns struck before I expected him to do so and
I was, too late, confronted with the shattering truth. He had in
fact found me out. He returned to England, worked like a mole, dug
up my history, no doubt, and so came to the logical conclusion that
it appeared more reasonable Michael Pendean should murder Robert
Redmayne than the opposite. Having reached this conviction, his
reconstruction of each event threw added light; but even so it must
have been a spark of prodigious inspiration that identified in Doria
the vanished Cornishman.

Ganns is a great man on his own plane. But, though he is a greedy
creature who digs his grave with his knife and fork, though his
habit of drenching himself with powdered tobacco, instead of smoking
like a gentleman, is disgusting, yet I have nothing but admiration
for him. His little plot--to treat me to a dose of my own physic and
present a forgery of "Robert Redmayne" in the evening dusk--was
altogether admirable. The thing came in a manner so sudden and
unexpected that I failed of a perfect riposte. To confess that I saw
the ghost was dangerous; but to pretend afterwards that I had seen
nothing was fatal. His own immense cleverness, of course, appeared
in assuring me that he saw nothing, thus tempting me to suspect that
I had in reality been a victim of my own imagination. From that
moment the battle was joined and I stood at grave disadvantage.

How much or how little he had won from my slip I had yet to learn.
In any case the time was all too short, for I guessed now that Ganns
must at least have associated me with the unknown--he who had worn
Redmayne's clothes and had tried to shoot Brendon in his absence. It
was Jenny, of course, who had assisted me to dig Marco's grave on
Griante and who shared my disappointment when we found that Brendon
had escaped my revolver. Even so only the accident of biting his
tongue saved him. Had I not seen blood flowing from his lips, I
should have fired again.

I was not aware that Peter proposed to arrest me on the night of
Albert's death, for upon what ground could he do so? Indeed I judged
that after my final operations were com