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dered him. And unfortunately he was murdered."

"Then you don't think it was suicide?" asked Marryatt, with a catch in his voice.

"If it was suicide, it was the result of a momentary insanity, almost incredibly sudden in its incidence. Suicide was certainly not part of the plan. A bogus suicide was, of course, a conceivable expedient; it would have been one way of getting rid of the undesirable Brotherhood's existence. But consider what that means. It means getting hold of a substitute who looked exactly like Brotherhood—he could not foresee the excoriation of the features—and murdering him at unawares. It meant, further, that Davenant would be suspected of the murder. No plan could have been more difficult or more clumsy."

"Then you mean," said Marryatt, "that we have to look for a murderer, somebody quite unknown to us?"

"I didn't say that," replied Carmichael, with a curious look. "I mean that we have to look for a murderer, some one whom we have not hitherto suspected. If Davenant murdered Brotherhood, that was certainly suicide; for Davenant was Brotherhood. But that seems to me impossible. The evidence all goes to show that there was a very careful plot in contemplation, which was cut short by a quite unforeseen counterplot."

"But look here," said Reeves, "if the original plan had come off, did he mean to come back here and live on here as Davenant?"