“Ah!” said Bryce.  He looked the old detective quietly in the eyes.  “You’d better tell me all about it,” he added.

“If we’re both going to tell each other—­all about it,” stipulated Harker.

“That’s settled,” assented Bryce.

Harker smoked thoughtfully for a moment and seemed to be thinking.

“I’d better go back to the beginning,” he said.  “But, first —­what do you know about Brake?  I know you went down to Barthorpe to find out what you could—­how far did your searches take you?”

“I know that Brake married a girl from Braden Medworth, that he took her to London, where he was manager of a branch bank, that he got into trouble, and was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude,” answered Bryce, “together with some small details into which we needn’t go at present.”

“Well, as long as you know all that, there’s a common basis and a common starting-point,” remarked Harker, “so I’ll begin at Brake’s trial.  It was I who arrested Brake.  There was no trouble, no bother.  He’d been taken unawares, by an inspector of the bank.  He’d a considerable deficiency—­couldn’t make it good—­couldn’t or wouldn’t explain except by half-sullen hints that he’d been cruelly deceived.  There was no defence —­couldn’t be.  His counsel said that he could—­”

“I’ve read the account of the trial,” interrupted Bryce.

“All right—­then you know as much as I can tell you on that point,” said Harker.  “He got, as you say, ten years.  I saw him just before he was removed and asked him if there was anything I could do for him about his wife and children.  I’d never seen them—­I arrested him at the bank, and, of course, he was never out of custody after that.  He answered in a queer, curt way that his wife and children were being looked after.  I heard, incidentally, that his wife had left home, or was from home—­there was something mysterious about it—­either as soon as he was arrested or before.  Anyway, he said nothing, and from that moment I never set eyes on him again until I met him in the street here in Wrychester, the other night, when he came to the Mitre.  I knew him at once—­and he knew me.  We met under one of those big standard lamps in the Market Place—­I was following my usual practice of having an evening walk, last thing before going to bed.  And we stopped and stared at each other.  Then he came forward with his hand out, and we shook hands.  ‘This is an odd thing!’ he said.  ’You’re the very man I wanted to find!  Come somewhere, where it’s quiet, and let me have a word with you.’  So—­I brought him here.”

Bryce was all attention now—­for once he was devoting all his faculties to tense and absorbed concentration on what another man could tell, leaving reflections and conclusions on what he heard until all had been told.