"You don't want me to make a long story of it, sir," Brightman observed, as
they drove off.

"Just the things that count, that's all."

"Well, we got on the track of the car all right," the detective began, "and
traced it to a small village called Frisby, the other side of Chester, and
to the house of a Mrs. Phillips, a woman in poor circumstances who had just
removed from Liverpool. She was the widow, all right. She showed us
letters, and plenty of them, from her husband in New York. It appears that
Gant alone had brought the coffin, which was left at the cemetery, and the
funeral will have taken place t his afternoon. Mrs. Phillips was full of
his praises, and it seems that he had paid her over the whole of the money
you spoke about--five thousand dollars."

"There was no chicanery so far, then," Crawshay observed. "The man was
dead, of course?"

"Absolutely," Brightman declared, "and his death seems to have taken place
exactly according to the certificate. Here comes the point, however. With
the aid of the local police and the doctor whom we called in, the bandage
around the wound was removed. We found in its place a perfectly fresh one,
bought in Liverpool, not in the least resembling the silk-lined fragment
which the ship's doctor brought into the cabin."

Crawshay looked gloomily out of the window.

"Well, I imagine that that settles the question of how the papers got into
England," he sighed.