"And yet the police never noticed it? Dear me, dear me! Well, well, I'll
give it to the doctor. Good morning, my good fellow, and many thanks;
good morning!"
Over the smoking room fire I examined this discovery very thoughtfully.
That it should have lain on the rocks all the time, and nobody, not even
the police, noticed it till now, seemed strange. Still, when one came to
think of it, the brown colour was very like the seaweed, and among that
jumble of boulders such a thing might readily have happened. But
certainly it had fallen out before the body was thrown into the sea, as
its condition proved.
I glanced through the entries till I came to the very last the poor man
had made; and then I sat up and opened my eyes very wide indeed. Plainly
and distinctly these mems. were jotted:
"Proof positive O'B. or confederate.
"To be discovered whether O'B. himself--or the other?
"Possibilities--Thomsons--No Scotts--No Scollays--No."
The Thomsons and Scotts I knew to be tenants of seaboard farms like the
Scollays, and after the Scollays came three other names, each with "No"
written after them. A pencil mark also scored across all the six names.
So here was Bolton's secret. Either O'Brien was actually in the island
himself, or he had a "confederate" here, and since that entry was made,
one of the two had crowned his series of crimes by murdering the man who
was on his track.
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