After a meal and a pipe he made his plan and presently stood again on the rough ground beneath the cliffs, where he had pretended so realistically to perish.  He intended no attempt to arrest; but, having created the effigy of himself and stuffed his knickerbockers and coat to resemble nature and deceive anybody who might return in darkness to his corpse, Brendon found a hiding-place near enough to study what would happen.  He expected Redmayne to return and guessed that another would return with him.  His hope was to recognize the accomplice and prove at least whether Jenny was right in hinting her husband’s secret wickedness, or whether Doria had justly accused her of collusion with the unknown.  It was impossible that both were speaking the truth.

With infinite satisfaction he heard Giuseppe’s voice, and even an element of grim amusement attended the Italian’s shock and his subsequent snipe-like antics as he leaped to safety before an anticipated revolver barrage.

The adventure told Brendon much and his first inclination was to arrest Doria on the following morning; but that desire swiftly passed.  A surer strategy presented itself.  From the first ambition—­to get Jenny’s husband under lock and key—­his mind leaped to a more workmanlike proposition.  He suspected, however, that Giuseppe might take the initiative and deny him any further opportunity of bettering their acquaintance; and that night as he fell asleep with an aching shin and cheek, Mark endeavoured to consider the situation as it must appear from Doria’s angle of vision.  Much temporal comfort resulted for him from this examination.

It seemed clear that Doria and Redmayne were working to destroy Albert Redmayne for their common advantage.  Let the old book lover disappear and Robert and his niece would be the last of the Redmaynes to share the fortune of the vanished brothers.  Robert, indeed, could have no open part in these advantages, for he was outlawed; but it would be possible for him, in process of time, when Jenny inherited all three estates and Robert, Bendigo and Albert were alike held to be deceased in the eyes of the law, to share the fortune in secret with his niece and her husband.  This view explained the prescience of Peter Ganns and his surprise that Albert Redmayne should still be in the land of the living.  Ganns, however, was proved mistaken in one vital particular, for there could no longer be any reasonable doubt that Robert Redmayne still lived.

Utterly mistaken as Brendon’s theories ultimately proved to be, they bore to his weary brain the stamp of truth and he next proceeded to consider Doria’s future attitude before the problem now awaiting him and his companion in crime.  Doria could not be sure that he had been recognized or even seen when approaching the supposed corpse of Redmayne’s victim; and, in any case, under the darkness, no man might certainly swear that it was Doria who came to dig the grave and dispose of the body.  Brendon confessed to himself that only Giuseppe’s startled oath had proved his presence, and Jenny’s husband might well be expected to offer a sound alibi if arrested.  He judged, therefore, that Doria would deny any knowledge of the incident; and time proved that Mark was right enough in that prediction.