Then I went back to Clara and told her that for the present she and you must not meet again. I did not tell her the truth; for the truth--of which she has no suspicion--is too horrible to tell. All she knows is that something terrible has happened, and that for some time--whether long or short I cannot now say--you and she must not meet again. Knowing me and my affection for you as you do, you will realise that I should not say this were the necessity not absolute and imperative. Please God, all will come right one day. Good-bye, my dear boy. God bless you. Your affectionate and faithful friend,--C.C. As I read this extraordinary letter, the explanation of Miss Clara's and Kate's inexplicable attitude came to me in a flash. Dolt, blockhead, addle-brained idiot that I was! I--a detective! It was well for me--it was high time, indeed--that I had decided to give up detective work. Fool that I was not to have seen it before! The Dumpling and Kate's father, the elder Miss Carleton's brother, were one and the same man! CHAPTER XXV. JOHN CARLETON'S DOUBLE. That Kate and her aunt were now aware of the identity of John Carleton with the Dumpling, I was absolutely sure. I could point back, even, to the moment when--to the latter, at least--the suspicion which afterwards became certainty was first aroused. It was when I was repeating, word for word, as they had fallen from his lips, the Dumpling's expressions about the poor, that the first sign of agitation had been noticeable in the elder woman. Then, when I went on to speak of his mania in regard to his being none other than Napoleon--then it was, as I clearly remembered, that the self-possessed and by no means impressionable Miss Clara had astonished and alarmed me by looking as if she were about to faint. Doubtless she had heard him say the same thing before and in the same words, and so had no difficulty in identifying the speaker as her brother. Kate, on the contrary, had apparently heard me out without connecting her father with the Dumpling. She had shown no sign of dismay or agitation, while listening to my story, and when her aunt had called her aside, at its conclusion, and had urged her to obtain from me the promise to give up my detective work, Kate had undertaken the task somewhat light-heartedly, as witness the episode of the uneclipsed eye. It must have been after Kate had left me, that the elder woman had spoken of some great and impending danger. How much of the truth she had told her niece I did not know; but when the poor girl returned alone to speak to me, she seemed visibly aged, and was trembling in every limb. Then it was that, by her aunt's command, she forbade me ever again to enter the house. Were I to do so, John Carleton and I must sooner or later come face to face, and that I should be the means of arresting--perhaps of bringing to the gallows--the father of the girl I loved, was too horrible to contemplate.