It cannot be said that Torry had been particularly lucky hitherto in elucidating the mystery of the double tragedy. Certainly he had collected a quantity of evidence, but none likely to indicate directly the names of the assassins. He suspected that Vass and Donna Maria, for reasons of their own, were shielding Mrs. Grent; but this belief had no real foundation in fact. It was incredible that Donna Inez could have had anything to do with the murder of a husband to whom she was fondly attached; yet Torry could not explain the conduct of Maria and Vass on any other grounds than that they knew of something which implicated the elder woman in the affair. Putting Vass out of the question, there was no one, save her aunt, whom Maria had an interest in screening; and Torry was confident that the Spanish girl was screening someone. She knew the truth, he believed, but kept silent for the sake of a certain person. Was that person Donna Inez? He could not, so far as the known evidence went, answer that question. Darrel had been careful to inform the detective of his interview with Blake and all that the Irishman had told him. He related the story of the Blue Mummy Society, and ended with an account of Roderick's denunciation of Captain Manuel. Torry believed the first, but disputed the second, although Blake, with red-hot enthusiasm, made out a very ingenious case against the Spaniard. He declared that Grent must have taken the ten thousand pounds to deliver to Julia Brawn in Mortality-lane; that when he had given her the money he had been attacked and killed by Manuel as having stolen the funds of the society; that Manuel, not finding the money on his dead body, had surmised that it was in the possession of Julia Brawn, and, having followed her to the Embankment, had killed her near Cleopatra's Needle. Then he had taken the money off her, and had sent it to Paris. Afterwards, to conceal his crime and gain for himself or the society an additional ten thousand pounds, he had applied to Grent's bank for the missing money. "It is as clear as day," said Roderick, "that Captain Manuel is the assassin."