"But the Smithsons remained firm in their belief in the genuineness of their Prince and in their conviction that he had been murdered--if not by the Carters, then by the mysterious secretary to the Russian Embassy or any other Russian or German emissary, for political reasons. "And thus the public was confronted with the two hypotheses, both of which led to a deadlock. No sensible person doubted that the so-called Russian Prince was a crook, and that he had a confederate to help him in his clever plot, but the mystery remained as to how the rascal or rascals disappeared so completely as to checkmate every investigation. The travelling by train that morning and setting the scene for a supposed murder was, of course, part of the plan, but it was the plan that was so baffling, because to an ordinary mind that disappearance could have been effected so much more easily and with far less risk without the train journey. "Of course there was not a single passenger on that train who was not the subject of the closest watchfulness on the part of the police, but there was not one--not excluding the Carters--who could by any possible chance have known that the Prince carried a large sum of money upon his person. He was not likely to have confided the fact to a stranger, and the mystery of the vanished body was always there to refute the theory of an ordinary murderous attack for motives of robbery." §4 The Old Man in the Corner ceased talking, and became once more absorbed in his favourite task of making knots in a bit of string. "I see in the papers," I now put in thoughtfully, "that Miss Louisa Smithson has overcome her grief for the loss of her aristocratic lover by returning to the plebeian one." "Yes," the funny creature replied dryly, "she is marrying Henry Carter. Funny, isn't it? But women are queer fish! One moment she looked on the man as a murderer, now, by marrying him, she actually proclaims her belief in his innocence." "It certainly was abundantly proved," I rejoined, "that Henry Carter could not possibly have murdered Prince Orsoff." "It was also abundantly proved," he retorted, "that no one else murdered the so-called Prince." "You think, of course, that he was an ordinary impostor?" I asked. "An impostor, yes," he replied, "but not an ordinary one. In fact I take off my hat to as clever a pair of scamps as I have ever come across." "A pair?" "Why, yes! It could not have been done alone!" "But the police..."