"
"What of that? I had seen him not two hours before."
"It is a most astounding circumstance that you should have seen him,"
said Captain Prendergast. "Are you sure it was he?"
"As sure as of my own identity. We were talking all the way between
London and Blackwater. But why does that surprise you?"
"_Because,_" replied Captain Prendergast, dropping his voice to the
lowest whisper,--"_because John Dwerrihouse absconded three months
ago, with seventy-five thousand pounds of the company's money, and has
never been heard of since._"
II.
John Dwerrihouse had absconded three months ago,--and I had seen him
only a few hours back. John Dwerrihouse had embezzled seventy-five
thousand pounds of the company's money, yet told me that he carried
that sum upon his person. Were ever facts so strangely incongruous,
so difficult to reconcile? How should he have ventured again into the
light of day? How dared he show himself along the line? Above all, what
had he been doing throughout those mysterious three months of
disappearance?
Perplexing questions these.
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