The day following this conversation Colonel Bates sent me up his Army List, open, and marked at the name of Colonel _Walter_ Chomley, and a note explaining that it was not Henry Arthur, but _Walter Chomley_ whom he had known at Meean Meer.
I then asked 'Henry Arthur' if his name was Walter or Henry Arthur.
He said: '_Henry Arthur. Surely I ought to know my own name!_'
Colonel Bates told the story to you the next time you (_i.e._ E. K. Bates) came to see him, and I remember we discussed it together when we met again.
Shortly afterwards you wrote to tell me that you had looked up a _Debrett_ for 1895, and had there found _Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley, a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, of the Rifle Brigade, etc._, so that Henry Arthur Chomley was evidently alive in that year, and _had_ been in the Rifle Brigade.
I was much pleased to get this corroborative evidence, though the mistake in initials must have been Colonel Bates' error, and apologised to Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in the Unseen.
A few weeks later, however, you wrote again, and told me that you had been staying with a friend, who drove you over to call upon Colonel and Mrs Henry Arthur Chomley, that he was a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, and was certainly _alive_, although not _at home_, at the time of your visit!
This information startled me, and my guide, at my request, went to look up the _soi-disant_ Colonel to find out what it all meant.
The latter then confessed to having taken a friend's name, said a sudden impulse came over him when I first asked his name, and having told one lie, he felt bound to go on deceiving me, but that he had known both Colonel Bates and Colonel Henry Arthur Chomley in India, and that his own real name was Anstruther!"
Now out of this curious jumble of true and false, two points remain clear:
My brother _had_ known a Chomley in India, and had succeeded him as Brigade Major at Meean Meer. This Chomley _was_ a brother of Sir Frederic Chomley, the well-known diplomatist, but his name was Walter, not Henry Arthur. Yet Sir Frederic _had_ a brother named Henry Arthur, and the impersonating Anstruther had borrowed the wrong brother's name when trying to pose as the friend of Colonel Charles Bates. To make confusion worse confounded, _Walter Chomley_ was alive, as well as _Henry Arthur_, at the time of Miss Mabel Smith's experiences, for I have seen his death within the last eight months!