The first necessity was to know something of the man.  Thus far, the true story of his life was an impenetrable mystery to me.

I began with such scanty sources of information as were at my own disposal.  The important narrative written by Mr. Frederick Fairlie (which Marian had obtained by following the directions I had given to her in the winter) proved to be of no service to the special object with which I now looked at it.  While reading it I reconsidered the disclosure revealed to me by Mrs. Clements of the series of deceptions which had brought Anne Catherick to London, and which had there devoted her to the interests of the conspiracy.  Here, again, the Count had not openly committed himself—­here, again, he was, to all practical purpose, out of my reach.

I next returned to Marian’s journal at Blackwater Park.  At my request she read to me again a passage which referred to her past curiosity about the Count, and to the few particulars which she had discovered relating to him.

The passage to which I allude occurs in that part of her journal which delineates his character and his personal appearance.  She describes him as “not having crossed the frontiers of his native country for years past”—­as “anxious to know if any Italian gentlemen were settled in the nearest town to Blackwater Park”—­as “receiving letters with all sorts of odd stamps on them, and one with a large official-looking seal on it.”  She is inclined to consider that his long absence from his native country may be accounted for by assuming that he is a political exile.  But she is, on the other hand, unable to reconcile this idea with the reception of the letter from abroad bearing “the large official-looking seal”—­letters from the Continent addressed to political exiles being usually the last to court attention from foreign post-offices in that way.

The considerations thus presented to me in the diary, joined to certain surmises of my own that grew out of them, suggested a conclusion which I wondered I had not arrived at before.  I now said to myself—­what Laura had once said to Marian at Blackwater Park, what Madame Fosco had overheard by listening at the door—­ the Count is a spy!

Laura had applied the word to him at hazard, in natural anger at his proceedings towards herself.  I applied it to him with the deliberate conviction that his vocation in life was the vocation of a spy.  On this assumption, the reason for his extraordinary stay in England so long after the objects of the conspiracy had been gained, became, to my mind, quite intelligible.