The other motive was perhaps the stronger one of detective fever. I was a bachelor, I had a good income and nothing to do, therefore this quest was one of great interest to me. I had often hunted beasts, but this man hunt was a much more powerful incentive to excitement. I could hardly sleep for thinking of the case, and was constantly engaged in piecing together the puzzle. As yet I had no clear clew to follow, but the first thing to be settled was the identity of Felix at Marshminster with Felix at Paris. Once I established that point, and proved conclusively that Felix had never left England, I would be in a position to prosecute the search in the neighborhood of Marshminster. I own that there was an additional reason in the pique I felt at the scornful disbelief of Olivia. She evidently considered my story pure fiction, and the strange disappearance of the corpse from the inn confirmed her in this belief. Irritated by such contempt, I was resolved to bring home the crime to Felix, and to prove conclusively to her that he was masquerading as her lover, the dead Francis. It would be a cruel blow when assured of the truth, but it was better that she should suffer temporary pain to dragging out a lifelong agony chained to a man whom I knew to be a profligate, a liar, and a murderer. At the end of two days I confirmed myself in the resolution to hunt down the criminal, and decided as the first step to go to Paris. Leaving Victoria by the night mail, I arrived in the French capital next morning. Anxious to lose no further time, I hastened at once to the Hôtel des Étrangers, in Rue de St. Honoré, and there took up my quarters. Recovered from the fatigues of the journey, I partook of luncheon, and then made inquiries about Felix Briarfield. To my surprise I not only discovered that he was in Paris, but that he was in the hotel at that moment. "Has he been staying here for any length of time?" I asked the manager. "For six weeks, monsieur, and now talks of going to Italy," was the astonishing reply. To say that I was surprised would give but a faint idea of what I felt. That the assertion of Olivia should thus prove true was almost impossible of belief. If Felix were here, and had been here for the past six weeks, it could not possibly be he whom I had met at Marshminster. Assuming this to be the case, who was the man of the Fen Inn who called himself Francis? My head was whirling with the endeavor to grapple with these thoughts. Suddenly an idea flashed into my brain which might possibly account for the mystery. "Can it be," thought I, "that it was Felix whom I met at the inn? Felix who tried to pass himself off as Francis, and then invented that lying story? Perhaps he was not dead, as I thought, but merely plunged into a trance. When he revived, seeing the uselessness of fighting with Francis, he fled back to Paris."