To carry on the same deception, Pyke decided to make up as Berlyn while disposing of the crate. In height and build he was, in his disguise, not unlike Berlyn. The chief difference between them was their colouring, both the Pykes being dark and Berlyn fair. Stanley therefore dyed his hair and lightened his complexion before going to Wales. The episode of the blackmailing letter was designed with a similar object. Phyllis Berlyn had staged the farce of the twisted ankle. She had fallen into Domlio’s arms in such a way that a photograph might have really been a profitable investment to a blackmailer. Pyke had, of course, forged the letter. The confederates hoped that the taking out of the car which they believed would result, together with the finding of the articles in the well, which they thought a competent detective might achieve, would throw the suspicion on Domlio. With regard to money, Pyke had resolved on a bold stroke. French found that he had instructed a firm of solicitors in London to get in touch with Jefferson’s lawyers in the Argentine for the purpose of arranging the sale of Jefferson’s property there. He had forged Jefferson’s signature to the necessary documents, and the matter was well advanced. This piece of greed had prevented Stanley from leaving London and had caused him to rent the Victory Place flat as a refuge in case Kepple Street got too hot to hold him. Flight thither under such circumstances had been decided on, and, therefore, when danger threatened, only the time and method of reaching it remained to be settled. As all Berlyn’s property went to Phyllis under the deceased’s will, she also would have been well off, so that when the two took up their abode in a rather out-of-the-way part of Algeria, as they had intended, they would have been comparatively rich. But thanks to Evan Morgan’s desire for a fishing expedition on the last day of his holidays, together with Inspector French’s steady pegging away at a puzzling and wearisome case, these evil hopes were frustrated. Some three weeks after the next assizes, both Stanley Pyke and Phyllis Berlyn paid for their crime with their lives, leaving the ownership of Jefferson’s money as a juicy morsel on which the lawyers of England and the Argentine could pile up fees to their hearts’ content. For French the case had not been an unmixed triumph. Though in the end he had taken the criminals and added to his reputation with his superiors, in his heart of hearts he knew that he had been saved by the skin of his teeth alone and that he had had a lesson in the danger of neglecting to follow up unlikely clues to the very end which would last him for his life. But on the whole he was satisfied. The End Transcriber’s Note This transcription follows the text of the first edition published by Harper & Brothers Publishers in 1928. A later Penguin Books edition was also used to provide corrections to unambiguous errors in the original.