"That's as may be," answered Peter, bringing out the gold snuffbox. "I hope you'll think better of it. You've had a bitter experience and learned a great deal that will help you in business as well as in life. Don't be beaten by a bad woman--only remember that you had the luck to meet and study one of the rarest female crooks our mysterious Creator ever turned out. A face like an angel and a heart like a devil. Let time pass and presently you'll see that this is merely a hiatus in a career that is only begun. Much good and valuable work lies before you; and to abandon a profession for which you are specially suited is to fly in the face of Providence anyway."
After a pause and a long silence, while the train sped through the darkness of the Simplon tunnel, Peter retraced the steps by which he had been enabled to solve the riddle of the Redmaynes.
"I told you that you had not begun at the beginning," he said. "It's really all summed up in that. You occupied an extraordinary position. The criminal himself, in the pride of his craft and by reason of the consuming vanity that finally wrecked him, deliberately brought you in. It was part of his fun--his art if you like--that he should involve a great detective for the added joy of making a fool of him. You were the spice in his bloody cup for Michael Pendean--the salt, the zest. If he had merely stuck to business, not a thousand detectives would ever have queered his pitch. But he was as playful as any other hunting tiger. He rejoiced in adding a thousand details to his original scheme. He was an artist, but too florid, too decadent in his decorations. And so he ruined what might have been the crime of the century. It is just the touch of human fallibility that has brought Nemesis to many a great criminal.
"The machinery he employed focussed attention from the first on the apparent murderer rather than his victim. It appeared impossible to doubt what had happened and Pendean's death was assumed but never proved. Particulars concerning Robert Redmayne were abundant; yet, during the whole course of the official inquiry, none was forthcoming concerning the supposed victim. Of him you had heard from his wife; and her original statement to you at Princetown--when she invited you, doubtless at Pendean's direction, to take up the case--was masterly because so nearly true in every respect.