The Luminous Face

“Simple in the main,” said Wise, “but elaborate as to details. He left nothing unprovided for. He foresaw every condition and met it. The only thing, and the thing that proved his undoing was his forgetting that Mr Taylor had not enjoyed the same social advantages that he himself had.”

“What do you mean?” growled Taylor.

“He had evening clothes ready for you here. He planned for every item of your conduct, but he couldn’t know that you would wear a wrist watch with evening dress! That little incident caught the attention of Zizi, and from that she instantly deduced that the man that got into that taxi with a wrist watch on in the evening, could not have been Manning Pollard himself! Moreover, he drew the attention of the doorman to the time on its illuminated dial, and so, the luminous face fixed the time, but Pollard would have had on no wrist watch.”

“That’s so,” agreed Prescott, “Pollard’s a perfect dresser, I happen to know.”

“He confessed it all,” went on Wise. “He was game, I’ll say, and he told me frankly that Gleason had threatened to tell of his shameful birth. He was very sensitive about the matter. Gleason told him he would disclose the secret unless Pollard ceased his attentions to Miss Lindsay. Also, Pollard knew, from Lane, of Gleason’s will. Therefore, rid of Gleason, Pollard figured he could win Miss Lindsay and the fortune. So he set about to get rid of Gleason – and did. His threat that day was, of course, with the idea that such a remark would tend to divert suspicion from him – which it did. His alibi, so perfectly prepared, he scorned to declare, knowing that when it was learned by inquiry it would be satisfactory, which it was. That’s all, except to credit my assistant, Zizi, with the acumen which found out the truth. Her suspicion of a double was roused by the wrist watch episode. She came over here, and learned that the exact doings of the man here that fatal evening were not precisely in Pollard’s usual manner. She watched Pollard come in and go out again. She followed him, and when he went into a house, she felt sure it was the home of his double. It was! She saw a man come out, and though it was like Pollard, her newly attentive eyes showed her it was not really he. Off guard, Taylor has many dissimilarities from his brother. She flew back to me with the story, not knowing how soon the denouncements was to come. And then, when Pollard telephoned he would give himself up, I knew at once he meant to have Taylor here in his place. So I went to Taylor’s place, and a more surprised man than Manning Pollard I never saw!”

“As my reward,” Zizi said quietly, “I want to be allowed to go and tell Phyllis Lindsay the truth. I love her so, and I don’t want her shocked at hearing about it from a lot of policemen.”

There was no objection on the part of anybody, and Zizi went on her errand.

An hour later, when all three of the Lindsays had been told, and had indeed been shocked and horrified, Philip Barry came in.

“Phyllis,” he said, scarcely seeing any one else.

Phyllis rose and went straight to him. He held out his arms, and she clung to him as they closed round her.

“I never doubted you for a minute, Phil,” she said, “but that man had a sort of power over me – a – oh, almost an hypnotic power, I think.”

“Forget him,” Zizi advised, smiling at the pair.

“Now, you two talk over things, while I go in the library and flirt with Louis, with Mrs Lindsay for chaperon. Forget everybody else, and think there are only you two in the whole wide world.”

THE END