“What?  Why, the whole thing!  Motive—­everything,” answered Rathbury.  “Don’t you see, Maitland and Aylmore (his real name is Ainsworth, by the by) meet at Dartmoor, probably, or, rather, certainly, just before Aylmore’s release.  Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man.  In time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes back.  The two meet.  Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is an ex-convict.  Result—­Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him.  Pooh!—­the whole thing’s clear as noontide, as I say.  As—­noontide!”

Spargo drummed his fingers again.

“How?” he asked quietly.  “How came Aylmore to be identified?”

“My work,” said Rathbury proudly.  “My work, my son.  You see, I thought a lot.  And especially after we’d found out that Marbury was Maitland.”

“You mean after I’d found out,” remarked Spargo.

Rathbury waved his cigar.

“Well, well, it’s all the same,” he said.  “You help me, and I help you, eh?  Well, as I say, I thought a considerable lot.  I thought—­now, where did Maitland, or Marbury, know or meet Aylmore twenty or twenty-two years ago?  Not in London, because we knew Maitland never was in London—­at any rate, before his trial, and we haven’t the least proof that he was in London after.  And why won’t Aylmore tell?  Clearly because it must have been in some undesirable place.  And then, all of a sudden, it flashed on me in a moment of—­what do you writing fellows call those moments, Spargo?”

“Inspiration, I should think,” said Spargo.  “Direct inspiration.”

“That’s it.  In a moment of direct inspiration, it flashed on me—­why, twenty years ago, Maitland was in Dartmoor—­they must have met there!  And so, we got some old warders who’d been there at that time to come to town, and we gave ’em opportunities to see Aylmore and to study him.  Of course, he’s twenty years older, and he’s grown a beard, but they began to recall him, and then one man remembered that if he was the man they thought he’d a certain birth-mark.  And—­he has!”

“Does Aylmore know that he’s been identified?” asked Spargo.

Rathbury pitched his cigar into the fireplace and laughed.

“Know!” he said scornfully.  “Know?  He’s admitted it.  What was the use of standing out against proof like that.  He admitted it tonight in my presence.  Oh, he knows all right!”

“And what did he say?”

Rathbury laughed contemptuously.

“Say?  Oh, not much.  Pretty much what he said about this affair—­that when he was convicted the time before he was an innocent man.  He’s certainly a good hand at playing the innocent game.”

“And of what was he convicted?”