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 it, I concluded, and having gone so far, there was every reason to suppose he would triumph if I--who alone of all men seemed personally interested--did not set myself to the finding of a new method for blocking his game. I could, I thought, understand what his motive for so foul a murder might have been. He had just purchased a valuable gold mine from Farnham. Should Farnham be made to vanish without fear of suspicion falling upon Wildred, the latter might not only be the owner of the mine, but repossess himself of the purchase-money, which must have comprised a very large sum. There was no further hope from the police. They had done their duty, had satisfied themselves on every point, and it would have been unjust to expect that they should continue to exert themselves in favouring my apparently wild view of the situation.