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moment. Brotherhood knew better. He had been working up his alter ego for years."

"Right under our noses!" protested Reeves.

"That was the cleverness of it," said Carmichael. "If there was a Mr. Brotherhood at Paston Oatvile, and a Mr. Davenant every week-end at Brighton, nobody would be deceived; it's a stale old dodge to keep up a double establishment in two different places. The genius of Brotherhood's invention was that he kept up two establishments within a stone's throw of each other. Nobody here could actually say that he'd seen Brotherhood and Davenant together, that goes without saying. But the two personalities were real personalities in the same world; and there were hosts of witnesses who would declare that they knew both. If Brotherhood suddenly ceased to exist, the last place where anybody would thing of looking for him would be the house next door."

"Good God, what a fool I've been!" said Mordaunt Reeves.

"The separate banking-account would be particularly useful to such a man," Carmichael went on. "If we could find out where Davenant banked, I have no doubt that we should discover a substantial balance. But of course, he wouldn't bank here."

"Why not?" asked Gordon.

"Because Brotherhood would want to deal with the local bank, and it's a very unsafe business