“Go on,” Pritchard directed.

“There isn’t much more to tell,” she continued.  “I found an old farmhouse—­the loneliest spot in Cornwall.  We moved there and I left him—­with Mathers.  I promised Mathers that he should have twenty pounds a week for every week he kept his master away from me.  He has kept him away for seven months.”

“What about that story of yours—­about his having gone in swimming?” Pritchard asked.

“I wanted people to believe that he was dead,” she declared defiantly.  “I was afraid that if you or his relations found him, I should have to live with him or give up the money.”

Pritchard nodded.

“And to-night you thought—­”

“I thought he was his brother Jerry,” she went on.  “The likeness was always amazing, you know that.  I was told that Jerry was in town.  I felt nervous, somehow, and wired to Mathers.  I had his reply only last night.  He wired that Wenham was quite safe and contented, not even restless.”

“That telegram was sent by Wenham himself,” Pritchard remarked.  “I think you had better hear what he has to say.”

She shrank back.

“No.  I couldn’t bear the sight of him again!”

“I think you had better,” Pritchard insisted.  “I can assure you that he is quite harmless.  I will guarantee that.”

He left the room.  Soon he returned, his arm locked in the arm of Wenham Gardner.  The latter had the look of a spoilt child who is in disgrace.  He sat sullenly upon a chair and glared at every one.  Then he produced a small crumpled doll, with a thread of black cotton around its neck, and began swinging it in front of him, laughing at Elizabeth all the time.

“Tell us,” Pritchard asked, “what has become of Mathers?”

He stopped swinging the doll, shivered for a moment, and then laughed.

“I don’t mind,” he declared.  “I guess I don’t mind telling.  You see, whatever I was when I did it, I am mad now—­quite mad.  My friend Pritchard here says I am mad.  I must have been mad or I shouldn’t have tried to hurt that dear beautiful lady over there.”

He leered at Elizabeth, who shrank back.

“She ran away from me some time ago,” he went on, “sick to death of me she was.  She thought she’d got all my money.  She hadn’t.  There’s plenty more, plenty more.  She ran away and left me with Mathers.  She was paying him so much a week to keep me quiet, not to let me go anywhere where I should talk, to keep me away from her so that she could live up here and see all her friends and spend my money.  And at first I didn’t mind, and then I did mind, and I got angry with Mathers, and Mathers wouldn’t let me come away, and three nights ago I killed Mathers.”

There was a little thrill of horror.  He looked from one to the other.  By degrees their fear seemed to become communicated to him.