“Last August it was. A week in Paris. She was bent on our going, and all because the Edwardses up the street had been there at Easter and she wanted to be even with them. And nothing would content her but that I should come too. Never again, that’s all I say—never again!”

“You don’t happen to have your passport with you by any chance, I suppose?”

“There I go again!” exclaimed Mr. James violently, dropping back into the chair from which he had just painfully risen. “Forgetting the one thing I meant to tell you. Not but what my daughter said it was all nonsense——”

“Never mind about your daughter,” said Mallett. “What was it you wanted to tell us about your passport?”

“It was stolen, sir—or at any rate, I lost it, and I always maintained it was stolen, though what anyone should want with such a thing I could never make out.”

“Stolen? How?”

“On the way home. I had it in my hand at Dover, of that I’m sure, because I remember passing it to the man in the office place and he never looked at it but just pushed it back to me. And then by the time we got to the train—my hands were full of things—tickets and parcels and a penny for an evening paper—you know how it is—anyhow, when I came to look for it, it wasn’t there.”

“Did you make any complaint at the time?”

“No. I looked for it on the platform, you know, just casually. I remember I said to my daughter: ‘My passport’s gone’, and she said: ‘You ought to tell the police’, but I said: ‘Nonsense, I shan’t want the thing again as long as I live—you’re not going to drag me abroad to face that dreadful cooking any more, you can be sure of that,’ I said——”

“All this on the platform, where anyone could hear you, I suppose?”

“Just so, sir, I suppose anyone could, though I never thought of that at the time.”

“You could hardly be expected to think that someone would pick it up, borrow your name and appearance, live under that name for a month and then use the passport to escape from justice after committing murder, certainly,” said Mallett.

“Good heavens, is that what the rascal did?” exclaimed Mr. James.

“It looks very much like it.”

“God bless my soul, I didn’t know there were such people in the world—I didn’t really. It gives me quite a turn to think of it.”