My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour, as he was absent in another quarter of the town.

“Ah, Mr. Gregg!” he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a chair patiently reading the newspaper.  “You are the very person I wish to see.  Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?”

“I have,” was my answer.  “Has the man in the hospital made any statement yet?”

“None.  He refuses point-blank,” answered the detective.  “But my own idea is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of the wood.”

“The first mystery—­that of the man—­proves to be a double mystery,” I said.

“How?  Explain it.”

“Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London.”

“What!” he gasped, starting up.  “Then he is not the person you identified him to be?”

“No.  But he was masquerading as Santini—­made up to resemble him, I mean, even to the mole upon his face.”

“But you identified him positively?”

“When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances.  Death alters the countenance so very much.”

“That’s true,” he said reflectively.  “But if the man we’ve buried is not the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased.  Why was the real man’s wife here?”

“And where has her body been concealed?  That’s the question.”

“Again a mystery.  We have made a thorough search for four days, without discovering any trace of it.  Quite confidentially, I’m wondering if this man Chater knows anything.  It is curious, to say the least, that the Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man’s appearance.  But have you actually seen Olinto Santini?”

“Yes, and have spoken with him.”

“I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no report.”

“I have chatted with Olinto.  His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but he is in ignorance that she is dead.”

“You did not tell him anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, you did well.  There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it, Mr. Gregg.  It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of it all.  I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he called upon Leithcourt.”

“What does he say?”

“Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement to make.”

“Can’t you compel him to say something?” I asked.

“No, I can’t.  That’s the infernal difficulty of it.  If he don’t choose to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood.”

And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective’s belief.

The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.

The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on everyone’s tongue in Dumfries.  In the smoke-room of the railway hotel three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the strange goings-on up at the Castle.