I he is no more and no less a fact, a
personality, an amusing reality than--well, this teacup. Here we are,
amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores
of books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and
there's not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet
grope between the lines of any autobiography, it's pretty clear what
one has got--a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the
indescribable. As for what you say your case is, the bizarre--that kind
very seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all our
pretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The
real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You just
trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and--but one
moment, I'll light up.'

A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the night
air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles
that stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford's head. Then
sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectation
of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. 'Nothing much
struck me,' he went on, leaning back on his hands, 'I mean on Sunday
evening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in the moon
a distinct glimpse of your face.'

'This,' said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart.

Herbert nodded. 'The fact is, I have a print of it,' he said.

'A print of it?'

'A miserable little dingy engraving.'

'Of this?' Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. 'Where?'

'That's the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I got
home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in
the house and it will turn up all in good time. It's the frontispiece
of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by
some amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover--confessions, travels,
trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.'

'And mine?' said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight.

Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlike
fashion across the room at his visitor.

'Sabathier's,' he said.

'Sabathier's!'

'A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from
memory; and perhaps it's not quite so vivid in this light; but still
astonishingly clear.'

Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion's face in an intens