but some still think he did.  Showed himself at Hartledon afterwards trying to get interview with new lord; new lord wouldn’t see him, and butler turned him out.  Gorton in a rage, went back to inn, got some drink, said he might be able to make his lordship see him yet; hinted at some secret, but too far gone to know what he said; began boasting of adventures in Australia.  Loose man there, one Pike, took him in charge, and saw him off by rail for London.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Carr, for the speaker had stopped.

“That’s pretty near all as far as Gorton goes.  Got a clue to an address in London, where he might be heard of:  got it oddly, too; but that’s no matter.  Came up again and went to address; could learn nothing; tracked here, tracked there, both for Gordon and Gorton; found Gorton disappeared close upon time he was cast adrift by Kimberly.  Not in London as far as can be traced; where gone, can’t tell yet.  So much done, summed up my experiences and came here to-day to state them.”

“Proceed,” said Mr. Carr.

The detective put his note-book in his pocket, and with his elbows still on the table, pressed his fingers together alternately as he stated his points, speaking less abruptly than before.

“My conclusion is—­the Gordon you spoke to me about was the Gordon who led the mutiny on board the Morning Star; that he never, after that, came back to England; has never been heard of, in short, by any living soul in it.  That the Gorton employed by Kedge and Reck was another man altogether.  Neither is to be traced; the one may have found his grave in the sea years ago; the other has disappeared out of London life since last October, and I can’t trace how or where.”

Mr. Carr listened in silence.  To reiterate that the two men were identical, would have been waste of time, since he could not avow how he knew it, or give the faintest clue.  The detective himself had unconsciously furnished a proof.

“Will you tell me your grounds for believing them to be different men?” he asked.

“Nay,” said the keen detective, “the shortest way would be for you to give me your grounds for thinking them to be the same.”

“I cannot do it,” said Mr. Carr.  “It might involve—­no, I cannot do it.”

“Well, I suspected so.  I don’t mind mentioning one or two on my side.  The description of Gorton, as I had it from Kimberly, does not accord with that of Gordon as given me by his friend the surgeon.  I wrote out the description of Gorton, and took it to him.  ‘Is this Gordon?’ I asked.  ‘No, it is not,’ said he; and I’m sure he spoke the truth.”

“Gordon, on his return from Australia, might be a different-looking man from the Gordon who went to it.”