Macari called on me the day after this strange scene to ask me about the memorial to Victor Emanuel.

“Before I consent to help you,” I said, “I must know why you murdered a man three years ago in a house in Horace Street.”

He sprang to his feet and grasping my arm, looked intently into my eyes.  I saw that he recognised me in spite of the great change that blindness makes in a face.

“Why should I deny the affair to an eye-witness?  To others I would deny it fast enough.  Now, my fine fellow, my gay bridegroom, my dear brother-in-law, I will tell you why I killed that man.  He had insulted my family.  That man was Pauline’s lover!”

He saw what was in my face as I rose and walked towards him.

“Not here,” he said hastily, “what good can it do here—­a vulgar scuffle between two gentlemen?”

“Go,” I cried, “murderer and coward.  Every word you have spoken to me has been a lie, and because you hate me you have to-day told me the greatest lie of all.”

He left me with a look of malicious triumph in his face.  I knew he lied, but how could I prove that he lied?  Only Ceneri could tell me the truth.  He was in Siberia, and, mad as the scheme seemed, thither I determined to go to get the whole truth from his lips.

I exerted all the influence I possessed.  I spent money freely, and with a special passport signed by the Czar himself, which placed all the resources of the Russian police at my disposal, I passed across Russia into Siberia.  At last, after travelling thousands of miles, I came up with the gang of wretched prisoners in which the doctor was.  Showing my papers to the officer in command, I was taken at once to the awful prison-house.  I had him brought to me in a private room, and placed before him food and drink.

“I want to ask you some questions,” I said, “questions which you alone can answer.”

“Ask them.  You have given me an hour’s release from misery.  I am grateful.”

“The first question I have to ask is—­who and what is that man Macari?”

Ceneri sprang to his feet.  “A traitor! a traitor!” he cried.

It was Macari who had betrayed him.  Macari was no more Anthony March, the brother of Pauline, than I was, and Pauline had never had a lover in the sense in which Macari had used the word.

Pauline was an innocent as an angel.  The lie I had come so far to destroy had dissolved.  There was one other question I had to ask.  Who was the man Macari had killed, and what had he to do with Pauline?  Ceneri’s face turned ashen as I asked him the question.  It was some moments before he understood that I was the man who had stumbled into the room.  Then he told me all.