Our talk became technical. Colonel Race’s boast was not an idle one. He knew a great deal. At the same time, he made one or two curious mistakes⁠—slips of the tongue, I might almost have thought them. But he was quick to take his cue from me and to cover them up. Once he spoke of the Mousterian period as succeeding the Aurignacian⁠—an absurd mistake for one who knew anything of the subject.

It was twelve o’clock when I went to my cabin. I was still puzzling over those queer discrepancies. Was it possible that he had “got the whole subject up” for the occasion⁠—that really he knew nothing of archaeology? I shook my head, vaguely dissatisfied with that solution.

Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I sat up with a sudden start as another idea flashed into my head. Had he been pumping me ? Were those slight inaccuracies just tests⁠—to see whether I really knew what I was talking about? In other words, he suspected me of not being genuinely Anne Beddingfeld.