“I think I shall choose a pot shot at the police.”
There was a moment of silence, then the doctor asked,
“Did you send that letter to Lee’s family?”
Vickers shook his head absently.
“Then,” cried the other, with decision, “you shall go home as Lee. Ten years might change a man so that not even his own father would know him,—especially ten years in this climate. Beside, there was a resemblance, you know.”
Vickers had lifted his head to laugh at the project for its impossibility, and paused to listen further, attracted by its sheer folly.
“You must have observed,” the doctor continued, “that fugitives are caught for the simple reason they go into a new country as strangers, and strangers are always objects of suspicion. Strangers always are called upon to give an account of themselves; strangers always have to explain why they have come. Now all these difficulties are obviated if only you can take up the life and personality of some one else. You are Lee, you go home to see your father. Nothing could be simpler. Well, yes, I admit that there is a risk, but——”
“But,” said Vickers, “there is also a Nellie. I told you, didn’t I, Doctor, that it is a name I am fond of?”
“It is a risk,” Nuñez went on, “but to stay here is a certainty.”
“To go back,” murmured Vickers, “to a real home, even if it belongs to another man, and a father, and above all an affectionate cousin——”