"You have quite made up your mind, then, that Sydney H. Corbett is the murderer?" "It looks uncommonly like it. At any rate, he knows something about it. If not, why did he bolt to France two days after the crime? Why has he concealed his identity? Why does he take pains to receive his correspondence in the manner he has adopted? And, by Jove! suppose he isn't in Monte Carlo at all, but in London all the time!" The inspector glowed with his sudden inspiration, but Bruce kept him to the lower level of realities. "Corbett is, or was, in Monte Carlo. Of that you may be sure. He, and none other, got the letters sent to the Hotel du Cercle. I cannot for the life of me imagine why he did not take the last one. But let us look at what we know. Lady Dyke, we will say, went to Corbett's chambers, secretly and of her own accord. That may be taken as fairly established. Thence there is a blank in our intelligence until she appears as a hardly recognizable corpse, stuffed by hands beneath an old drain-pipe in the Thames at Putney. How do you fill up that gap, Mr. White?" "Simply enough. Corbett, or some other person, persuaded her to voluntarily accompany him to Putney. She was killed there, and not in London. It would be almost a matter of impossibility for any man to have conveyed her lifeless body from Raleigh Mansions to Putney without attracting some notice. One man could _not_ do it. Several might, but it is madness to imagine that a number of people would join together for the purpose of killing this poor lady." "The seemingly impossible is often accomplished." "Do you really believe, then, that she met her death in London?" "I have quite an open mind on the question." "You forget that she had resolved early that day to visit her sister at Richmond, and Putney is on the direct road. What more reasonable than to assume--" "Beware of assumptions! You are assuming all the time that Corbett was a principal in her murder." "Very well, Mr. Bruce. Then I ask you straight out if you don't agree with me?" "I do not." This declaration astounded the barrister himself. Often the mere utterance of one's thoughts is a surprise. Speech seems to stiffen the wavering outlines of reflection, and the new creation may differ essentially from its embryo. It was so with Bruce in this instance. Ever since Mr. White's arrival had aroused him from the positive stupor caused by the stock-broker's unwitting revelation, Claude Bruce had been slowly but definitely deciding that Mensmore did not kill Lady Dyke. He had seen him, unprepared, facing death as preferable to dishonor. At such moments a man's soul is laid bare. With the shadow of a crime upon his conscience Mensmore's actions could not have been so genuine and straightforward as they undoubtedly were.