"Well?" he said cheerfully. "It was, wasn't it?"

Gregory stopped dead and stared at him. Then: "Old dog Tray!" he said sneeringly. "If your brain was as good as your
nose, Bassett, you'd be a whale of a newspaper man."

"Don't bother about my brain. It's working fine to-day, anyhow. Well,
what had he to say for himself?"

Gregory's mind was busy, and he had had a moment to pull himself
together.

"We both get off together," he said, more amiably. "That fellow isn't
Jud Clark and never was. He's a doctor, and the nephew of the old doctor
there. They're in practice together."

"Did you see them both?"

"Yes."

Bassett eyed him. Either Gregory was a good actor, or the whole trail
ended there after all. He himself had felt, after his interview, with
Dick, that the scent was false. And there was this to be said: Gregory
had been in the house scarcely ten minutes. Long enough to acknowledge a
mistake, but hardly long enough for any dramatic identification. He was
keenly disappointed, but he had had long experience of disappointment,
and after a moment he only said: "Well, that's that. He certainly looked like Clark to me."

"I'll say he did."

"Rather surprised him, didn't you?"

"Oh, he was all right," Gregory said. "I didn't tell him anything, of
course."