“Sir,” said Gilead, rising, nettled, in his turn, and moved to an instant resolution. “I am sorry that my ignorance offends you. But though I am uninformed as to the lady’s name and works, I can claim some knowledge of another romancer which may both startle and disturb you. I allude, sir, to Mr Winsom Wyllie.”
“Well,” said the stranger, for the first time coolly—“what of him? I did not write the book, nor, I trust, are you presuming to attribute its authorship to Miss Cox?”
“Book? Authorship?” cried Gilead, staring.
“Certainly,” said the other. “You did not guess? But your ignorance was excusable in that case. Yes, sir, I confess, reciprocating your confidence, that my name also was assumed. I had particular reasons—as who would not have—for concealing my own in a public advertisement of such a character, and I signed with the first that occurred to my memory. It was taken from a popular feuilleton which I had observed in the hands of a young lady by whom I happened to sit months ago in the twopenny tube. ‘Winsom Wyllie, Ladykiller’—that was, if I remember rightly, the title of the tale, and I borrowed it haphazard in my emergency.”
Gilead, like one in a dream, put his hand to his brow.
“Would you—would you mind telling me,” he said, “what is your real name?”
“I have no reason to be ashamed of it, sir,” said the stranger. “It is Bundy—Emmanuel Bundy.”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (continued)
Utterly dumfoundered as he was for the moment, Gilead very quickly rallied from his stupefaction, and, summoning all his native urbanity to his aid, advanced a step and seized the stranger’s right hand in both of his own.
“Mr Bundy,” he said, “I apologise to you with all my heart.”