Thus closed our opening episode. The murder of Michael Pendean became received as a fact capable of everything but proof absolute, while the escape of Robert Redmayne offered an insoluble problem to the authorities. Michael Pendean indeed was dead enough, for it had been a part of my original conception that he should never reappear. Obviously he could not do so; and I, who had already created "Doria," now began to live my new part in life with zest and gusto--a dramatist and actor in one. He did not spring full-fledged from my brain; but like other great impersonators, I gradually enlarged and enriched the character and finally found myself actually living and thinking the new being into which I was translated. Pendean sank to the shadow of a shade. My past, by an effort of will, was banished from my mind. I invented and presently believed in another past. When my wife returned to my side, I fell in love with her for the second time; and so superbly did I enter into the existence and mental outlook of Giuseppe Doria that I was almost shocked by the familiarity of Jenny when she kissed me and hugged me at the first convenient opportunity after her arrival at "Crow's Nest"! And her own echoing genius swiftly accepted this magnificent apotheosis of her Cornish husband. I became a new man in her eyes also. With that marvellous power of make-believe, possible only to women of supreme genius, she swiftly conceived of me as something altogether different from Michael Pendean--a creature richer and rarer--and this effort of imagination enabled us both to create that solid appearance of a new and quickening understanding that so amply sufficed to deceive Bendigo Redmayne and delude Brendon. It is impossible to exaggerate the unique entertainment we derived from this phase of our deception. We proposed to let six months pass before the death of Bendigo Redmayne, and we were already contemplating details and considering how best to bring his brother back upon the stage for the purpose of Ben's destruction, when Mark Brendon blundered in upon us once again. He came very pat with calf love in his eyes; and it seemed that he might well assist us once more and apply his limited attainments to the problem of our sea wolf's approaching exit. Because we knew our Marco well, by this time, and perceived how useful he might be in disseminating that atmosphere of reality so desirable in cases such as these.