“I need not appear in the matter at all,” said Holmes to the evident relief of our melancholy acquaintance. “If I can clear it up I don’t ask to have my name mentioned.”

“Well, it’s very handsome of you, I am sure. And your friend, Dr. Watson, can be trusted, I know. Now, Mr. Holmes, as we walk down to the place there is one question I should like to ask you. I’d breathe it to no soul but you.” He looked round as though he hardly dare utter the words. “Don’t you think there might be a case against Mr. Neil Gibson himself?”

“I have been considering that.”

“You’ve not seen Miss Dunbar. She is a wonderful fine woman in every way. He may well have wished his wife out of the road. And these Americans are readier with pistols than our folk are. It was his pistol, you know.”

“Was that clearly made out?”

“Yes, sir. It was one of a pair that he had.”

“One of a pair? Where is the other?”

“Well, the gentleman has a lot of firearms of one sort and another. We never quite matched that particular pistol — but the box was made for two.”

“If it was one of a pair you should surely be able to match it.”

“Well, we have them all laid out at the house house if you would care to look them over.”

“Later, perhaps. I think we will walk down together and have a look at the scene of the tragedy.”

This conversation had taken place in the little front room of Sergeant Coventry’s humble cottage which served as the local police-station. A walk of half a mile or so across a wind-swept heath, all gold and bronze with the fading ferns, brought us to a side-gate opening into the grounds of the Thor Place estate. A path led us through the pheasant preserves, and then from a clearing we saw the widespread, half-timbered house, half Tudor and half Georgian, upon the crest of the hill. Beside us there was a long, reedy pool, constricted in the centre where the main carriage drive passed over a stone bridge, but swelling into small lakes on either side. Our guide paused at the mouth of this bridge, and he pointed to the ground.

“That was where Mrs. Gibson’s body lay. I marked it by that stone.”

“I understand that you were there before it was moved?”

“Yes, they sent for me at once.”

“Who did?”

“Mr. Gibson himself. The moment the alarm was given and he had rushed down with others from the house, he insisted that nothing should be moved until the police should arrive.”

“That was sensible. I gathered from the newspaper report that the shot was fired from close quarters.”

“Yes, sir, very close.”

“Near the right temple?”

“Just behind it, sir.”

“How did the body lie?”

“On the back, sir. No trace of a struggle. No marks. No weapon. The short note from Miss Dunbar was clutched in her left hand.”

Lupin exclaimed:

"What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?"

"No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was just a wish which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I was ailing at the time; my other son, my little Jacques, had just been born. And every day we heard of some fresh misdeed of Gilbert's - forgeries, swindles - so much so that we spread the news, in our immediate surroundings, of his departure for abroad, followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it became still more so when the political storm burst in which my husband was to meet his death."

"What do you mean?"

"A word will be enough: my husband's name was on the list of the Twenty-seven."

"Ah!"

The veil was suddenly lifted from Lupin's eyes and he saw, as in a flash of lightning, a whole legion of things which, until then, had been hidden in the darkness.

Clarisse Mergy continued, in a firmer voice:

"Yes, his name was on it, but by mistake, by a piece of incredible ill-luck of which he was the victim. It is true that Victorien Mergy was a member of the committee appointed to consider the question of the Two-Seas Canal. It is true that he voted with the members who were in favour of the company's scheme. He was even paid - yes, I tell you so plainly and I will mention the sum - he was paid fifteen thousand francs. But he was paid on behalf of another, of one of his political friends, a man in whom he had absolute confidence and of whom he was the blind, unconscious tool. He thought he was showing his friend a kindness; and it proved his own undoing. It was not until the day after the suicide of the chairman of the company and the disappearance of the secretary, the day on which the affair of the canal was published in the papers, with its whole series of swindles and abominations, that my husband knew that a number of his fellow-members had been bribed and learnt that the mysterious list, of which people suddenly began to speak, mentioned his name with theirs and with the names of other deputies, leaders of parties and influential politicians. Oh, what awful days those were! Would the list be published? Would his name come out? The torture of it! You remember the mad excitement in the Chamber, the atmosphere of terror and denunciation that prevailed. Who owned the list? Nobody could say. It was known to be in existence and that was all. Two names were sacrificed to public odium. Two men were swept away by the storm. And it remained unknown where the denunciation came from and in whose hands the incriminating documents were."

"Daubrecq," suggested Lupin.

"No, no!" cried Madame Mergy. "Daubrecq was nothing at that time: he had not yet appeared upon the scene. No, don't you remember, the truth came out suddenly through the very man who was keeping it back: Germineaux, the ex-minister of justice, a cousin of the chairman of the Canal Company. As he lay dying of consumption, he wrote from his sick-bed to the prefect of police, bequeathing him that list of names, which, he said, would be found, after his death, in an iron chest in the corner of his room. The house was surrounded by police and the prefect took up his quarters by the sick man's bedside. Germineaux died. The chest was opened and found to be empty."