"
"He's a clever devil. If you hadn't turned up just when you did,
he would never have been found out."
"I wonder. It was ingenious, but it's often the ingenious thing
which gets found out. The awkward thing from Cayley's point of
view was that, though Mark was missing, neither he nor his body
could ever be found. Well, that doesn't often happen with a
missing man. He generally gets discovered in the end; a
professional criminal; perhaps not--but an amateur like Mark! He
might have kept the secret of how he killed Mark, but I think it
would have become obvious sooner or later that he had killed
him."
"Yes, there's something in that .... Oh, just tell me one thing.
Why did Mark tell Miss Norbury about his imaginary brother?"
"That's puzzled me rather, too, Bill. It may be that he was just
doing the Othello business--painting himself black all over. I
mean he may have been so full of his appearance as Robert that he
had almost got to believe in Robert, and had to tell everybody.
More likely, though, he felt that, having told all of you at the
house, he had better tell Miss Norbury, in case she met one of
you; in which case, if you mentioned the approaching arrival of
Robert, she might say, 'Oh, I'm certain he has no brother; he
would have told me if he had,' and so spoil his joke.
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