“That, Inspector, is the whole truth of this unhappy affair. I had hoped never to have to speak of it again, and now that I have told you of it I trust that the whole miserable business may be decently buried and forgotten.” French nodded gravely. He was puzzled by this long story of the doctor’s. The tale was certainly possible. As he reviewed each point he had to admit that not only was it possible, but it was even reasonably probable. Given a man of weak character as this doctor appeared to be, and a clever and unscrupulous ruffian, as Roper had been painted, the whole affair could have happened quite naturally and logically. Moreover it adequately covered all the facts. On the other hand, if Philpot had killed his wife he would tell just some such tale as this. There was no one to refute it. Roper and his wife were dead and the nurse had left the country. Of course, it might be possible to trace the nurse, but it certainly couldn’t be done easily or rapidly. As he turned the matter over in his mind it seemed to French that the crucial point was the authenticity of the confession. If Philpot had written it, he had done so because he was guilty and because he, therefore, could not help himself. However terrible the putting of such a statement in black and white would be to him, it would be the lesser of two evils, the alternative being immediate betrayal. But if the confession were a forgery all this would be reversed. It could only have come into being in some such way as the doctor had described. In fact, in his case it would amount to a powerful confirmation of his story. Now, upon this point there was no doubt. The confession definitely _was_ a forgery. The Yard experts were unanimous, and their opinion under such circumstances might be taken for gospel. French might therefore start with a strong bias in favour of Philpot. This French realised, and then he found himself again weighed down by doubt. Was it credible that a man would really pay blackmail for fear of having an obviously forged confession produced? At first French did not think so—he would not have done it himself—but as he considered the special circumstances he saw that this question did not accurately describe the situation as it would appear to the doctor. In the first place, Philpot did not know how bad a forgery the document was. It seemed to him his own writing, and he had no guarantee that it would not be accepted as such. But he knew that if it were produced he would almost certainly have the misery of arrest and imprisonment and possibly of trial also. Moreover, the episode of the nurse would come out, and the result of the whole business would have been ruin to his career. If Philpot had been a strong man he would no doubt have faced the situation, but as it was, French felt sure that he would take the coward’s way. No, there was nothing in this idea to make him doubt the man’s story.