refused to accept Charles's cheque, or anything else, as he phrased it, except 'hard money.' So we lingered on perforce at Lake George in ignoble inaction.
'Of course,' I observed to my brother-in-law that evening, 'Elihu Quackenboss was Colonel Clay.'
'I suppose so,' Charles murmured resignedly. 'Everybody I meet seems to be Colonel Clay nowadays—except when I believe they are, in which case they turn out to be harmless nobodies. But who would have thought it was he after I pulled his hair out? Or after he persisted in his trick, even when I suspected him—which, he told us at Seldon, was against his first principles?'
A light dawned upon me again. But, warned by previous ebullitions, I expressed myself this time with becoming timidity. 'Charles,' I suggested, 'may we not here again have been the slaves of a preconception? We thought Forbes-Gaskell was Colonel Clay—for no better reason than because he wore a wig. We thought Elihu Quackenboss wasn't Colonel Clay—for no better reason than because he didn't wear one. But how do we know he ever wears wigs? Isn't it possible, after all, that those hints he gave us about make-up, when he was Medhurst the detective, were framed on purpose, so as to mislead and deceive us? And isn't it possible what he said of his methods at the Seamew's island that day was similarly designed in order to hoodwink us?'
