"'There may have been some mistake,' I said; 'the clothes marked with the name of Henry Dunbar may not have really belonged to Henry Dunbar. He may have given those clothes to his old valet.' "'That's not likely, sir; for the old valet only met him at Southampton two or three hours before the murder was committed. No; I can see it all now. It's the strangest case that ever came to my knowledge, but it's simple enough when you've got the right clue to it. There was no probable motive which could induce Henry Dunbar, the very pink of respectability, and sole owner of a million of money, to run the risk of the gallows; there were very strong reasons why Joseph Wilmot, a vagabond and a returned criminal, should murder his late master, if by so doing he could take the dead man's place, and slip from the position of an outcast and a penniless reprobate into that of chief partner in the house of Dunbar and Company. It was a bold game to hazard, and it must have been a fearfully perilous and difficult game to play, and the man has played it well, to have escaped suspicion so long. His daughter's conscientious scruples have betrayed him.' "Yes, Mr. Carter spoke the truth. Margaret's refusal to fulfil her engagement had set in motion the machinery by means of which the secret of this foul murder had been discovered. "I thought of the strange revelation, still so new to me, until my brain grew dazed. How had it been done? How had it been managed? The man whom I had seen and spoken with was not Henry Dunbar, then, but Joseph Wilmot, the murderer of his master—the treacherous and deliberate assassin of the man he had gone to meet and welcome after his five-and-thirty years' absence from England! "'But surely such a conspiracy must be impossible,' I said, by-and-by; 'I have seen letters in St. Gundolph Lane, letters in Henry Dunbar's hand, since last August.'