“If we can lay hands on him, you’ll be hearing his version from the dock!” retorted Mr. Lindsey.  “Your natural love of letting things go smoothly, Portlethorpe, is leading you into strange courses!  Man alive!—­take a look at the whole thing from a dispassionate attitude!  Since the fellow got hold of the Hathercleugh property, he’s sold everything, practically, but Hathercleugh itself; he’s lost no time in converting the proceeds—­a couple of hundred thousand pounds!—­into foreign securities, which, says yon man Paley, are convertible into cash at any moment in any market!  Something occurs—­we don’t know what, yet—­to make him insecure in his position; without doubt, it’s mixed up with Phillips and Gilverthwaite, and no doubt, afterwards, with Crone.  This lad here accidentally knows something which might be fatal—­Carstairs tries, having, as I believe, murdered Crone, to drown Moneylaws!  And what then?  It’s every evident that, after leaving Moneylaws, he ran his yacht in somewhere on the Scottish coast, and turned her adrift; or, which is more likely, fell in with that fisher-fellow Robertson at Largo, and bribed him to tell a cock-and-bull tale about the whole thing—­made his way to Edinburgh next morning, and possessed himself of the rest of his securities, after which, he clears out, to be joined somewhere by his wife, who, if what Hollins told us last night is true—­and it no doubt is,—­carried certain valuables off with her!  What does it look like but that he’s an impostor, who’s just made all he can out of the property while he’d the chance, and is now away to enjoy his ill-gotten gains?  That’s what I’m saying, Portlethorpe—­and I insist on my common-sense view of it!”

“And I say it’s just as common-sense to insist, as I do, that it’s all capable of proper and reasonable explanation!” retorted Mr. Portlethorpe.  “You’re a good hand at drawing deductions, Lindsey, but you’re bad in your premises!  You start off by asking me to take something for granted, and I’m not fond of mental gymnastics.  If you’d be strictly logical—­”

They went on arguing like that, one against the other, for a good hour, and it seemed to me that the talk they were having would have gone on for ever, indefinitely, if, on the stroke of noon, Mr. Gavin Smeaton had not walked in on us.  At sight of him they stopped, and presently they were deep in the matter of the similarity of the handwritings, Mr. Lindsey having brought the letter and the will with him.  Deep, at any rate, Mr. Lindsey and Mr. Portlethorpe were; as for Mr. Gavin Smeaton, he appeared to be utterly amazed at the suggestion which Mr. Lindsey threw out to him—­that the father of whom he knew so little was, in reality, Michael Carstairs.

“Do you know what it is you’re suggesting, Lindsey?” demanded Mr. Portlethorpe, suddenly.  “You’ve got the idea into your head now that this young man’s father, whom he’s always heard of as one Martin Smeaton, was in strict truth the late Michael Carstairs, elder son of the late Sir Alexander—­in fact, being the wilful and headstrong man that you are, you’re already positive of it?”