“I had believed you to be guilty (as I have owned), more because I wanted you to be guilty than for any other reason.  And now, the Sergeant had come round by a totally different way to the same conclusion (respecting the nightgown) as mine!  And I had got the dress that was the only proof against you!  And not a living creature knew it—­yourself included!  I am afraid to tell you how I felt when I called these things to mind—­you would hate my memory for ever afterwards.”

At that place, Betteredge looked up from the letter.

“Not a glimmer of light so far, Mr. Franklin,” said the old man, taking off his heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, and pushing Rosanna Spearman’s confession a little away from him.  “Have you come to any conclusion, sir, in your own mind, while I have been reading?”

“Finish the letter first, Betteredge; there may be something to enlighten us at the end of it.  I shall have a word or two to say to you after that.”

“Very good, sir.  I’ll just rest my eyes, and then I’ll go on again.  In the meantime, Mr. Franklin—­I don’t want to hurry you—­but would you mind telling me, in one word, whether you see your way out of this dreadful mess yet?”

“I see my way back to London,” I said, “to consult Mr. Bruff.  If he can’t help me——­”

“Yes, sir?”

“And if the Sergeant won’t leave his retirement at Dorking——­”

“He won’t, Mr. Franklin!”

“Then, Betteredge—­as far as I can see now—­I am at the end of my resources.  After Mr. Bruff and the Sergeant, I don’t know of a living creature who can be of the slightest use to me.”

As the words passed my lips, some person outside knocked at the door of the room.

Betteredge looked surprised as well as annoyed by the interruption.

“Come in,” he called out, irritably, “whoever you are!”

The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen.  Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young.  Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two.  His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house.  His nose presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of the West.  His forehead rose high and straight from the brow.  His marks and wrinkles were innumerable.  From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown—­eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—­looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention captive at their will.  Add to this a quantity of thick closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner.  Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its