y as, when aimlessly
glancing at a weekly paper in the club next day, I came across a
paragraph which gushed in the conventionally nauseous manner over the
forthcoming marriage of the beautiful young heiress, Miss Karine
Cunningham, and Mr. Carson Wildred, the "well-known millionaire and
popular man of Society."

Days never dragged as they did with me until I received the promised
intimation from my friend the inspector that tidings had arrived from
the police in New York. It was all right, so far as my friend was
concerned, and I need have no further fears regarding his safety. The
body found in the Thames was certainly not that of Mr. Harvey Farnham,
as he was in New York, and had actually been interviewed there. He had
been very ill in crossing, and had had the misfortune to fall down the
companionway on shipboard, in a heavy gale, spraining his ankle. He
would not be able to resume his journey and proceed to Denver for some
time to come, but had laughed at the idea of any foul play. When
questioned on the subject of the ring, he said that he had given it to
his friend, Mr. Wildred, at parting, and jokingly added that he had
experienced great difficulty in getting it off.

In these circumstances, as there could be no further doubt of Mr.
Farnham's living presence in New York, no possible shadow of suspicion
need any longer rest upon Mr. Carson Wildred, who had throughout done
all in his power to further the investigations. The search for the man
from the camp near the backwater would therefore be carried on upon the
same lines as before.

A hot sense of injustice burned within me. I had been thwarted on every
side, not, I believed, by the revelation of truth, but by Carson
Wildred's superior cunning. He had boasted to me that, in the
_role_ of villain, he would have been more successful than I; and I
was quite ready to agree with this statement. All things seemed against
me, and yet something which I took to be instinct cried aloud that my
dream had not deceived. I could not understand how it was that the New
York police had been made to believe in the identity of a man falsely
representing himself to be Harvey Farnham, yet I was convinced that in
some devilish way even they had been cozened. No other man living,
perhaps, could have undertaken so huge a scheme, with so many different
strings to pull at one and the same time, and successfully carry it
through, save Carson Wildred. But Carson Wildred _had_ attempted