Littimer laid his cigar aside and looked
Bell steadily in the face.

"I have granted your request against my better judgment," he said. "I am
not sanguine that the least possible good can come of it. But I have
quite grown out of all my illusions; I have seen the impossible proved
too often. Will you take anything?"

"I hope to do so presently," Bell said, pointedly; "but not yet. In the
first instance I have to prove to you that I have not stolen your
Rembrandt."

"Indeed? I should like to know how you propose to do that."

"I shall prove it at once. You were under the impression that you
possessed the only copy of the 'Crimson Blind' in existence. When you
lost yours and a copy of the picture was found in my possession, you were
perfectly justified in believing that I was the thief."

"I did take that extreme view of the matter," Littimer said, drily.

"Under the circumstances I should have done the same thing. But you were
absolutely wrong, because there were two copies of the picture. Yours was
stolen by an enemy of mine who had the most urgent reasons for
discrediting me in your eyes, and the other was concealed amongst my
belongings. It was no loss to the thief, because subsequently the stolen
one--my own one being restored to you--could have been exposed and
disposed of as a new find. Your print is in the house?"

"It hangs in the gallery at the present moment."

"Very good. Then, my lord, what do you say to this?"

Bell took the roll of paper from his pocket, and gravely flattened it out
on the table before him, so that the full rays of the electric light
should fall upon it. Littimer was a fine study of open-mouthed surprise.
He could only stand there gaping, touching the stained paper with his
fingers and breathing heavily.

"Here is a facsimile of your treasure," Bell went on. "Here is the same
thing. You are a good judge on these matters, and I venture to say you
will call it genuine. There is nothing of forgery about the engraving."

"Good heavens, no," Littimer snapped. "Any fool could see that."

"Which you will admit is a very great point in my favour," Bell
said, gravely.

"I begin to think that I have done you a great injustice," Littimer
admitted; "but, under the circumstances, I don't see how I could have
done anything else. Look at that picture. It is exactly the same as mine.
There is exactly the same discolouration in the margin in exactly the
same place."

"Probably they lay flat