“Well, I’ll tell you what it is, Balby G. Overton,” said Vickers, “there is just one place you don’t want romance, and that is right here in your own life, and that is where I have got it at the moment, and I’ve come to you to help me get it out.”
“You talk as if it were a bad tooth,” returned Overton.
“Will you extract it?”
The other smiled. “Not a little of a lawyer’s business,” he said, “is extracting romance from the lives of his clients.”
“It’s a lawyer’s business, too, to know when people are lying, and when they are telling the truth, isn’t it? I hope so, for I am going to tell you a yarn which sounds uncommonly impossible.”
“You encourage me to think it may be amusing.”
Vickers laughed. “Well, it begins well,” he said. “In the first place, I am not Bob Lee.”
“Indeed,” said Overton. “Let me congratulate you.”
It was impossible to tell, from his tone, whether he believed the statement or not, and Vickers made no attempt to determine, but went on with his story.
He told, with a gravity unusual in him, of the death of Lee, and the incidents which had led him to assume the dead man’s personality. When he had finished there was a pause. Overton smoked on without looking at him, until at last he observed: