"My God!" exclaimed Copplestone, "to think that he stood there with us over the body he had torn—and even lifted it into my arms—without so much as a quiver."
"He was not capable of remorse or regret," Monsieur Dupont returned. "If he had been, he would have killed himself long ago." He paused. "There remain now a few points of my own part in this affair to tell you, and we will then ask the doctor for his statement."
"Before you do that," said Doctor Lessing, bluntly, "I, for one, am curious to know who you really are, and how you came to take such a large hand in the whole business."
"My connection with the whole business," replied Monsieur Dupont, "is a long story. I have already told it to Inspector Fay, and I will tell it again with pleasure when all the more important statements have been made. As regards myself——"
Inspector Fay took upon himself the continuation of the sentence.
"Up to a few years ago," he said, "Monsieur Dupont was, under a certain pseudonym, the most brilliant member of the French SecretService—and was, in fact, admitted to have no equal in the whole of Europe."
"A gross exaggeration, my friends," protested Monsieur Dupont. He waved the inspector to silence. "When I came to London last week," he told them, "I came knowing that John Tranter had killed two women. I had known that when I returned from America six months before. You can imagine the difficulties in front of me then. I was to prove that an English Privy Councillor, a well-known and highly respected man, was in reality a madman who was responsible for two of the most dreadful crimes that had ever been committed. I had never seen him, but fortunately he was in Paris at that time, and I had no difficulty in making his acquaintance. By extreme good fortune, I was able to render him a service in the streets which placed him under an obligation to me. I observed him carefully, only to find him to all appearances the sanest and most level-headed man I had ever met. But there was one thing—he shut himself away completely from the society ofwomen, and he avoided all places where beauty was to be found in any form. But I was so far from any proof. My next step was to test my own belief that his madness was an inherent disease, and to do that I employed inquiry agents in this country to discover whether there were any records of such a case in existence. It is only two weeks since I received information from them that a woman named Mary Winslowe had died in an asylum from that very kind of madness, forty years ago."
"That is true," corroborated the doctor.
"I came to London immediately. While following up my clues, I renewed my acquaintance with Tranter, and pressed him to act as my cicerone in London society, hoping to be able to entrap him into a situation that would lead him to betray himself. And he took me to Richmond. What happened there, you know. Though he knew when Christine Manderson first came into the room what the outcome would be, he was unable to tear himself away. And in the garden she forced herself upon him. He tried to resist her, but his madness overcamehim. That is the explanation of the absence of a cry for help, which once I stated to be the key to the mystery. If she had been walking along that path to the house, she would have had time to cry out, no matter how quickly the assailant had sprung out at her. But she did not utter a cry because she was already in the arms of the assailant, compelling him to a passionate embrace, and without doubt it was a simple thing to strangle her silently in that very position."
"Good God!" Copplestone shuddered.
"His account of how she had asked him to find Mr. Copplestone, and tell him she was not well, and of how he had left her on her way to the house, was a succession of ingenious lies which could not be disproved. That is my story," concluded Monsieur Dupont. "The next most important point at the moment is that James Layton is cleared of a charge from which he could not possibly have saved himself."
"Layton will be released with full honors to-morrow," the inspector said.
"And I think," added Monsieur Dupont,"that there will be another matter—not unconnected with a young lady named Jenny West—upon which we shall have to congratulate him—and with very good reason."
Conclusion
Half-an-hour later, when the doctor's statement had been made, Copplestone and Mrs. Astley-Rolfe stood together in the flower-laden garden.
"My dear," said the new man, "I brought you here to witness my deliverance. Yesterday, when you had left me, I made up my mind to put an end to my life. To-day I am free. The cloud has rolled away. I am fit to keep my promise—if you wish it kept."
She smiled up at him through happy tears.
"If I wish it kept!" she whispered.
"By Jove!" Copplestone exclaimed, "I believe in every miracle that has ever been reported, suggested, or hinted at, from the first hour of the world!"