zzled me, namely, the inexplicable scene I
had witnessed on the bank of the Nene.

I referred to it; whereupon Ambler Jevons drew from his breast-pocket
two photographs, and, holding them before the eyes of the trembling
old man, said:

"You recognise these? For a long time past I've been making inquiries
into your keen interest in amateur theatricals. My information led me
to Curtis's, the wigmakers; and they furnished me with this picture,
showing you made up as as Henry Courtenay. It seems that, under the
name of Slade, you furnished them with a portrait of the dead man and
ordered the disguise to be copied exactly--a fact to which a dozen
witnesses are prepared to swear. This caused me to wonder what game
you were playing, and, after watching, I found that on certain nights
you wore the disguise--a most complete and excellent one--and with it
imposed upon the unfortunate widow of weak intellect. You posed as her
husband, and she believed you to be him. So completely was the woman
in your thrall that you actually led her to believe that Courtenay was
not dead after all! You had a deeper game to play. It was a clever and
daring piece of imposture. Representing yourself as her husband who,
for financial reasons, had been compelled to disappear and was
believed to be dead, you had formed a plan whereby to obtain the
widow's fortune as soon as the executors had given her complete
mastery of it. You had arranged it all with her. She was to pose as a
widow, mourn your loss, and then sell the Devonshire estate and hand
you the money, believing you to be her husband and rightly entitled to
it. The terrible crime which the unfortunate woman had committed at
your instigation had turned her brain, as you anticipated, and she,
docile and half-witted, was entirely beneath your influence until----"
and he paused.

"Until what?" I asked, utterly astounded at this remarkable
explanation of what I had considered to be an absolutely inexplicable
phenomenon.

He spoke again, quite calmly:

"Until this man, to his dismay, found that poor Mrs. Courtenay's
intellect was regaining its strength. They met beside the river, and,
her brain suddenly regaining its balance, she discovered the ingenious
fraud he was imposing upon her." Turning to Sir Bernard, he said, "She
tore off your disguise and declared that she would go to the police
and tell the truth of the whole circumstances--how that you had
induced her to go to the house in Kew