Two months had elapsed since the meeting between Major Murchison and Stella Spencer, recorded in the last chapter.

A handsome, well-set-up man of about thirty was travelling up from Manchester to London. The reason of his journey was his desire to visit his sister, Caroline Masters, who occupied a small flat in the neighbourhood of King's Cross.

Up to a short time ago this handsome, well-set-up man had been leading a very quiet life in the busy city of Manchester. He was an electrician by trade, and a very clever one. He was civil, well-spoken, intelligent beyond his station, but he had not forgathered much with his fellow-workers, had kept himself very much to himself. And yet, strange to say, this self-isolation had not provoked suspicion or resentment on the part of his daily associates.

Reginald Davis, for such was his name, had been unjustly suspected of murder, and the police had been hot on his track. Then had come the suicide in No. 10 Cathcart Square, and his sister, Caroline Masters, had identified the dead body as that of her brother.

Caroline Masters had always been a plucky, resourceful girl, and devoted to him. The dead man, no doubt, bore some resemblance to himself, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to swear to a false identification, and remove from him the sleepless vigilance of the police. This much she had conveyed to him in a guarded letter.

Reginald Davis, the man falsely accused of murder, was dead in the eyes of the law: in a sense, he had nothing further to fear. But at the same time, caution must be observed. The few friends he had were in London; at any time he might run across one or more of them. So, taking another name, he had hidden himself in Manchester, and corresponded secretly with the one of the two sisters he could trust, Caroline Masters.

And then, suddenly, the burden had been lifted from his soul. There was a small paragraph in the evening newspapers, afterwards reproduced in the morning ones, which told him that he need not skulk through the world any longer.

A man lying under sentence of death for a brutal murder and without hope of reprieve, had confessed to the crime of which Davis had been falsely accused. In the paragraph, which was, of course, essentially the same in all the papers, were a few words of sympathy for the unfortunate Reginald Davis who had stolen into No. 10 Cathcart Square and committed suicide, under a sense of abject terror. The police had carefully investigated the statements of the condemned man, with the result that they found the late Reginald Davis absolutely innocent.

The late Reginald Davis, very alive and well, knocked at the door of his sister's flat. She had been apprised of his coming, and greeted him affectionately. She sat him down before a well-cooked supper. He was hungry and ate heartily. She did not disturb him with much conversation till he had finished. Then she spoke.

"Well, Reggie, that was a bit of luck indeed." She was, of course, alluding to the confession of the real murderer. "Now you are as free as air. You were always a bit of a bad egg, old boy, but never a criminal to that extent."

"No, hang it all, I am not particular in a general way, but murder was not in my line," he answered briefly. "It was hard lines to get scot-free of the other things, and then to be suspected of that at the end."

He looked at her admiringly. "By Jove! Carrie, you were always the cleverest of the lot of us. That was a brain-wave of yours, walking in and identifying me as the suicide." Mrs. Masters smiled appreciatively. "Yes, it came to me in a flash. I read the account in the papers. It struck me I might do something useful. I went up to the court with the tale of a missing brother. I saw the body; the poor creature might have been your twin. Of course, I swore it was you, and gave you a new lease of life." She added severely, "I hope you have taken advantage of what I did, and become a reformed character." Davis spoke very gravely. "Yes, Carrie, I swear to you I have. That shock was the making of me. I have lain very low, worked hard, and put by money."

He pulled out an envelope from his breastpocket, and thrust it into her hand; it was full of one-pound notes.

"Fifty of the best, old girl, for a little nest-egg. I have not forgotten my best pal, you see."

The tears came into Mrs. Masters' eyes. He had been a bad egg, but he had a good heart at bottom.

"That is very sweet of you, Reggie; it will come in very useful. And now to go back for a moment to Cathart Square. Who was the poor devil who killed himself there? He was as like you as two peas are like each other."

"I think we have got to find that out," said Reginald Davis gravely. "Nor, reading the account in the papers, am I quite sure that it was a suicide."

"But that was the verdict," interrupted the sister.

"I know, but there are peculiar things about the case. Letters addressed to Reginald Davis were found on him; there was a letter signed Reginald Davis, addressed to the Coroner, announcing his intention to commit suicide. Those letters had been placed there by the person who murdered him, and that person who murdered him was somebody who knew me, unless it was the accidental taking of a common name."

"But the razor was clutched in his hand, Reggie!"

"Quite easy," replied Davis, who, if not a murderer himself, could easily project himself, apparently, into the mind of one. "We will assume, for the moment, it was a man. He cut the poor devil's throat, and then thrust the razor into his stiffening hand, to convey the idea of suicide."

"It might be," agreed Mrs. Masters.

"Well, Carrie, one thing I have fixed on, and it is one of the things for which I have come up. I go to Scotland Yard to-morrow, tell them straight I am Reginald Davis, without a stain upon my character, explain to them that you were misled by a close resemblance. We will have that body exhumed. I am firmly convinced it was a murder."

"Let sleeping dogs lie, Reggie," advised Mrs. Masters, who had a horror of the law and its subtle ways. "Never mind who was the poor devil who was found there, whether he was murdered or committed suicide. It is no affair of yours."

"It is an affair of mine in this way," replied Davis in a dogged tone. "The person who murdered the poor devil, as you call him, knew something about me, and took a liberty with my name."

"It served you a good turn, Reggie, anyway."

"I know; I admit that. But the murderer did not know he was doing me, thanks to you, a good turn when he killed the other fellow."

Mrs. Masters thought deeply for a few moments. "Reggie, you have been a very bad egg, I am sure. I shall never guess a quarter of what you have been guilty of."

He laid his hand affectionately on her arm. "Well for you, old girl, you can't. That is all past and done with. By the way, that letter found on the poor chap, announcing his intention to commit suicide, did they ask you to identify my handwriting? Of course, the others addressed to him didn't matter much. Anybody could have written them. But my letter was a forgery. Did they ask you to identify that particular letter?"

"They did, Reggie, and my brain was in such a whirl that I could hardly read it. I said that I believed it was in your handwriting. It was certainly very like, although, as you can imagine, I looked at it through a sort of mist. Anyway, it was as like your handwriting as the dead man was like you." Davis ruminated for a few moments. "That letter was forged by somebody who knew me and could imitate my hand to a nicety. I am thinking of all the wrong'uns I knew in the old days. I think I can fix him."

"Yes," said Mrs. Masters breathlessly. She was capable of great daring in the cause and the service of those she loved, but she was not habituated to the ways of hardened criminals.

"A man I was a bit associated with in the old days; luckily he didn't drag me in far enough. He was an expert forger. We used to call him 'George the Penman.'"

Mrs. Masters shuddered. "Oh, you poor weak soul, you were so near it as that?"

"Very near, Carrie. The shock of the false accusation of murder pulled me up straight. I saw where I was drifting, and made up my mind that the straight path was the surest." At the moment that Mr. Davis gave utterance to this honourable sentiment there was a ring at the bell.

Mrs. Masters rose at once. "It is Iris. I dropped her a note to say you were coming. She will be so pleased to see you."

There floated into the small sitting-room a very dainty and ethereal figure, Miss Iris Deane, a charming member of the chorus at the Frivolity Theatre.

She flung her arms round the neck of her handsome brother. "Oh Reggie, dear, what a treat to see you! And all this dreadful thing is lifted from you."

Iris was not his favourite sister. She was clever in a worldly way, and had made good. But she had not the sterling loyalty of Caroline.

Davis gently checked her enthusiasm. "And how have you been getting on, Iris? Always floating on the top as usual?"

Miss Iris showed her dimples. "Always floating on the top, as you say, dear old boy. A silly, soft chap fell in love with me; wrote most impassioned love-letters. Well, he was too soppy for me to care much about him, and when his rich brother came along, offering me a price for his love-letters, I can tell you I just jumped at the chance."

"Did you get a good price?" queried her brother.

"I stuck out for ten thousand," explained the capable Iris; "but this chap was a good bargainer, and I let them go at seven. It was better on the whole. If I had married Roddie, I should have been so fed-up in a month that I should have run away from him, and then Heaven knows where I might have ended."

Davis looked at his sister approvingly. There was enough of the old Adam left in him to entertain a slight envy of his sister's chances. Seven thousand pounds, a little fortune in itself, was a good bit of work, a handsome reward for the display of her dimples.

"Roddie who, dear? You might tell us his other name," queried Mrs. Masters, who perhaps was also smitten with a sense of envy.

"That's telling," answered the sprightly Iris, who was not given to be too frank about her own affairs. "But if either of you two dear things want a little ready, apply to me. Of course, you will remember I have got to take care of myself, to make provision for my old age."

Davis and Carrie exchanged glances. They knew the volatile Iris of old. As a child she had always been mean and grasping. Not much of the seven thousand would come their way, if they were on the verge of starvation.

Carrie spoke in cold accents. "You are really too generous, Iris. But we shall not have to trespass upon your generosity. I have enough for my humble wants. And Reggie has been able to put by, so much so that he has been kind enough to make me a very handsome money present to-night."

"Dear old Reggie," said the sweetly smiling Iris. "I am so glad you have made good."

And then Davis spoke: "Thanks, in great part, to Carrie, who told that splendid lie about the suicide, or murder, at 10 Cathcart Square. You remember that, of course?"

"Suicide, wasn't it?" said Iris, but her cheek had grown a little pale.

"I don't think so. There was a forged letter purporting to be written by me. I am going to Scotland Yard to-morrow, stating frankly who I am, and urging them to exhume the body. We will find out who the man, buried under the name of Reginald Davis, really was."

And then the agitation of his younger sister became extreme. She clutched convulsively at his arm.

"Reggie, you will not do this. What does it matter to you who the man was? Go under some other name, and let sleeping dogs lie." Unconsciously she had used the same expression as Mrs. Masters, but from different motives.

"I have been under a different name for a longer time than I care to remember," answered Davis doggedly. "I have a fancy to resume my own, and make a clean breast of it to the police. They have nothing else to charge me with."

Iris fell on her knees, and the tears rained down her cheeks.

"For my sake, Reggie, if not for your own."

"And why for your sake? Tell us what you mean," demanded her brother sternly.

And Iris spoke as clearly as she could speak amidst her strangled sobs.

"If you try and unearth that mystery at Cathcart Square, I might be dragged in, and it might be very awkward for me."