Over Gabriel Strood's signature there were just these words written in his hand and nothing more: "Mont Blanc by the Brenva route.

July, 1868." Yet it was just that sentence which had so startled Hilary.

Gabriel Strood _had_ then climbed Mont Blanc from the Italian side--up from the glacier to the top of the great rock-buttress, then along the world-famous ice-arete, thin as a knife edge, and to right and left precipitous as a wall, and on the far side above the ice-ridge up the hanging glaciers and the ice-cliffs to the summit of the Corridor.

From the Italian side of the range of Mont Blanc! And the day before yesterday Gabriel Strood had crossed with Walter Hine to Italy, bound upon some expedition which would take five days, five days at the least.
It was to the Brenva ascent of Mont Blanc that Garratt Skinner was leading Walter Hine! The thought flashed upon Chayne swift as an inspiration and as convincing.

Chayne was sure.