In answer to his veiled suggestions she told him that her father’s name was Theodore Averill, that he had lived in Bayonne, where he had held a good appointment in the wine industry, and that he had married a French lady whom he had met at Biarritz. This lady, her mother, had died when she was born and her father had only survived her by about four years. On his death she had come to her uncle Simon, he being her only other relative. She was born in Bayonne and baptised, she believed, by the Anglican clergyman at Biarritz. Her father was a member of the Church of England and her mother a Huguenot. “This,” French said when, half an hour later, he was back in the vestry room of the old church, “will lead us to certainty. I will send a wire to the Biarritz police and have the records looked up. Of course, I don’t doubt Miss Averill’s word for a moment, but it is just conceivable that she might have been misled as to her birth. However, we want to be absolutely sure.” He wired that evening and it may be mentioned here that in the course of a couple of days he received the following information:— 1. Mr. Theodore Averill was a wine merchant and lived at Bayonne. 2. Mr. Averill and Mlle. Anne de Condillac had been married in the English church at Biarritz on the 24th of June, 1905. 3. Mrs. Averill had died on the 17th of July, 1906, while giving birth to a daughter. 4. This daughter, whose name was Ruth, was baptised at the Anglican church, Biarritz, on the 19th of August, 1906. 5. Mr. Theodore Averill had died on the 8th of September, 1910, his little four-year old daughter then being sent to England. So that was certainty at last. Roper was the evil genius behind all these involved happenings. He it was who had got Ruth away from the doomed house; he had sent Whymper off to pass the stolen notes so that he might learn if their numbers were known; he had murdered Simon Averill; he had stolen the notes from the safe; he had murdered his wife; he had burned the house. All was now clear—except the one point at which French, trembling with exasperation, was again brought up. What had happened to Roper? What blunder had he made? How had he died? And again; where was the money? Was it hidden or was it destroyed? As French went down to the police station to tell Sergeant Kent he might withdraw his observation on Whymper, he determined that next morning he would begin a meticulous and detailed search of the ground surrounding the ruins in the hope of finding the answer to his last question. But next morning French instead found himself contemplating with a growing excitement a new idea which had leaped into his mind and which bade fair to change the whole future course of his investigation. CHAPTER ELEVEN A Startling Theory Inspector French’s change of plans was due to a new idea which suddenly, like the conventional bolt from the blue, flashed across the horizon of his vision.