"Yes, he was--though still it would be possible for him then to have entered his own house--but his was not the face of the man I had seen. I learnt that, to my amazement, when for the first time I stood before him. But, listen again! In the morning, at a restaurant, I found in a Directory, of which I had learnt the use, that that house was Occleve House, and that Lord Penlyn was the owner of it. And then my surprise was great, for only an hour or so before I had found that Occleve was the right name of Walter Cundall." "You had learnt that?" "When I lifted Walter in my arms in the Park, I felt against his breast a book half out of his pocket. The murderer had missed that! I took that book, for even in my haste and grief, I thought that in it might be something that would give me a clue. But what were really in it of importance were a certificate of his mother's marriage, another of his own birth, and a letter, years old, from her to him. They told me all, and, moreover they proved to me, as I then thought, that his murderer lived in the very house and bore the very name that by right seemed to be his. "They were the certificates he showed to them on the morning he disclosed himself," Stuart said, "and he had not removed them from his pocket-book when he was killed!" "Yes! that he showed to _them_; you have said it! It was to _two_ of them that he showed those papers. And one was the friend of the other, he lived with and upon him, he dares not meet me face to face, he evades me! he, he is the murderer. He, Philip Smerdon!" Stuart sprung to his feet. "Philip Smerdon!" he exclaimed. "No, no! it cannot be!" "It is, I say! It is he. Of all others, who but he could have done this deed? Who but he who crept back to Occleve House having in his pocket the keys whereby to enter it, who but he who shuns me because it has been told him that I knew the assassin's face! And on the very night that he is back in London, sleeping in that house, are not the clothes that might have led to his identification removed?" Stuart paused a moment, deep in thought, and then he said: "It cannot be! On the day before the murder, in the morning, he left London for Occleve Chase. He must have been there when it was committed." "Bah!" Guffanta said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "he did not leave London, he only made a pretence of doing so. All that day he, in his disguise, must have been engaged in tracking my poor friend, and at night he killed him." Then he paused a moment, and when he next spoke he asked a question. "Where was he going when he left Occleve House this afternoon in the cab, and with his luggage?" "He was going to join his father, he said," Stuart answered. "His father is ill and has been ordered abroad for his health, and, having recovered some money from his ruined business, he is going on the Continent, and Smerdon is going with him." "And to what part of the Continent are they going?"