God! thank God!" the old man said; then sat down suddenly and
dropped his face between his hands and was still for a long time. When
he looked up again his eyes were red, but his lips were smiling.

"If you only knew what a relief it is," he said. "If you only knew how
much I have suffered, Mr. Cleek. His friendship with that Spanish woman;
his going with her to identify the body--even assisting in its hurried
burial! These things all seemed so frightfully black--so utterly without
any explanation other than personal guilt."

"Yet they are all easily explained, Major. His friendship for the
Spanish woman is merely due to a promise to intercede for him with
Zuilika. She is his one aim and object, poor little donkey! As for his
identification of the body--well, if the widow herself could find points
of undisputed resemblance, why not he? A nervous, excitable, impetuous
boy like that--and anxious, too, that the lady of his heart should be
freed from the one thing, the one man, whose existence made her
everlastingly unattainable--why, in the hands of a clever woman like
Anita Rosario such a chap could be made to identify anything and to
believe it as religiously as he believes. Now, go to bed and rest easy,
Major. I'm going to call up Dollops and do a little night prowling. If
it turns out as I hope, this little riddle will be solved to-morrow."

"But how, Mr. Cleek? It seems to me that it is as dark as ever. You put
my poor old head in a whirl. You say there is swindling; you hint one
moment that the body was not that of Ulchester, and in the next that
murder has been done. Do, pray, tell me what it all means--what you make
of this amazing case."

"I'll do that to-morrow, Major; not to-night. The answer to the
riddle--the answer that's in my mind, I mean--is at once so simple and
yet so appallingly awful that I'll hazard no guess until I'm sure. Look
here"--he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a gold piece--"do
you know what that is, Major?"

"It looks like a spade guinea, Mr. Cleek."

"Right; it is a spade guinea--a pocket piece I've carried for years.
You've heard, no doubt, of vital things turning upon the tossing of a
coin. Well, if you see me toss this coin to-morrow, something of that
sort will occur. It will be tossed up in the midst of a riddle, Major;
when it comes down it will be a riddle no longer."

Then he opened the door, closed it after him, and, before the Major
could utter a word, was gone