"
John Dwerrihouse had absconded three months ago--and I had seen him
only a few hours back! John Dwerrihouse had embezzled seventy-five
thousand pounds of the company's money, yet told me that he carried
that sum upon his person! Were ever facts so strangely incongruous,
so difficult to reconcile? How should he have ventured again into
the light of day? How dared he show himself along the line? Above
all, what had he been doing throughout those mysterious three months
of disappearance?
Perplexing questions these--questions which at once suggested
themselves to the minds of all concerned, but which admitted of no
easy solution. I could find no reply to them. Captain Prendergast
had not even a suggestion to offer. Jonathan Jelf, who seized the
first opportunity of drawing me aside and learning all that I had
to tell, was more amazed and bewildered than either of us. He
came to my room that night, when all the guests were gone, and we
talked the thing over from every point of view; without, it must
be confessed, arriving at any kind of conclusion.
"I do not ask you," he said," whether you can have mistaken your
man. That is impossible."
"As impossible as that I should mistake some stranger for yourself.
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