Should I tell him frankly of the amazing discovery I had made? I feared to do so, lest he should laugh me to scorn. The actual existence of Courtenay seemed too incredible. And yet as he was working to solve the problem, just as I was, there seemed every reason why we should be aware of each other's discoveries. We had both pursued independent inquiries into the Seven Secrets until that moment, and it was now high time we compared results.
"Well, Jevons," I exclaimed, hesitatingly, at last, "I have during the week elucidated one fact, a fact so strange that, when I tell you, I know you will declare that I was dreaming. I myself cannot account for it in the least. But that I was witness of it I will vouch. The mystery is a remarkable one, but what I've discovered adds to its inscrutability."
"Tell me," he urged quickly, halting and turning to me in eagerness. "What have you found out?"
"Listen!" I said. "Hear me through, until you discredit my story." Then, just as I have already written down the strange incidents in the foregoing chapters, I related to him everything that had occurred since the last evening he sat smoking with me in Harley Place.
He heard me in silence, the movements of his face at one moment betraying satisfaction, and at the next bewilderment. Once or twice he grunted, as though dissatisfied, until I came to the midnight incident beside the river, and explained how I had watched and what I had witnessed.
"What?" he cried, starting in sudden astonishment. "You actually saw him? You recognised Henry Courtenay!"
"Yes. He was walking with his wife, sometimes arm-in-arm."
He did not reply, but stood in silence in the centre of the road, drawing a geometrical design in the dust with the ferrule of his stick. It was his habit when thinking deeply.
I watched his dark countenance--that of a man whose whole thought and energy were centred upon one object.
"Ralph," he said at last, "what time is the next train to London?"
"I must go at once to town. There's work for me there--delicate work. What you've told me presents a new phase of the affair," he said in a strange, anxious tone.
"In a certain degree--yes. It makes clear one point which was hitherto a mystery."
"And also makes plain that poor Mrs. Courtenay met with foul play?" I suggested.