And so I went at once to see Rivers. I found him in his rooms, the ones he had taken while he was to assist Wise in his work, and he greeted me cordially.
“The plot thickens,” he said as I told him of Sadie’s wireless station. “I knew that girl was a sly one. She’s one of the most important people in the big spy web. She’s one of their spyders, who spin a pretty web and attract gullible flies. Amos Gately fell for her charms,—you know, Brice, she is a siren,—and somehow she lured him into the web she so deftly spun. To my mind, Gately was a good, upright citizen, who fell for a woman’s wiles. I’m not sure about this, it may be he was mixed up in spy work before Sadie came on the scene,—but I’m certain she was accessory before, during, or after the fact.”
“Accessory to his murder?” I asked.
“Not necessarily; but strongly accessory to his wrongdoing in the matter of treason. I think she, for a time, worked Gately through Rodman, but, latterly, she grew bolder or found she could do more by personal visits and she came and went by the secret elevator, pretty much as she chose.”
“I hate to have Miss Raynor know this,” I said with a covert glance at Rivers, to see how he took the remark.
“So do I,” he said, as frankly as a boy; “I may as well tell you, Brice, that I love that girl. She is, to me, the very crown of womanhood. I have worshiped her from the first moment I saw her. But, understand, I have no hopes,—no aspirations. I shall never offer my hand and heart to any woman while I have no name to offer. And I shall never have a name. If I haven’t yet discovered my own identity I never can. No, I’m no pessimist, and I know that some time some sudden shock might restore my memory all in a minute, yet I can’t bank on such a possibility. I’ve talked this over with Rankin,—he’s the doctor who’s following up my case,—time and again. He says that a sudden and very forcible shock is needed to restore my memory, and that it may come and—it may not. He says it can’t be forced or brought about knowingly,—it will have to be a coincidence,—a happening that will jar the inert cells of my brain—or, something like that,—I don’t remember the scientific terms.”
Rivers passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
I was in a quandary. I had gone to see the man with full purpose of luring him to Gately’s office and confronting him with the sketched snowflake on the blotting-pad. Now, since he had confided to me his love for Olive Raynor, I shrank from doing anything that might prove him to be Amos Gately’s murderer. For I was fond of Miss Raynor, in a deeply respectful and unpresumptuous fashion. And I had noticed several things of late that made me feel pretty sure that her friendship for Rivers was true and deep, if indeed it were not something more than friendship. This, to be sure, would argue but a fickle loyalty to the memory of Amory Manning, but as Norah and I agreed, when talking it over, Miss Raynor had never shown any desperate grief at Manning’s disappearance,—at least, not more than the loss of a casual friend might arouse.
But I knew where my duty lay. And so I said, “Rivers, I wish you’d go round to Mr. Gately’s office with me. Don’t you think that if you were there,—and you never have been,—you might chance upon some clew that has escaped the notice of Wise or Hudson or myself?”
“Righto!” he said; “I’ve thought myself I’d like to go there. Not, as you politely suggest, to find overlooked clews, but just as a matter of general interest. I’m out, you know, to find the murderer, and also to trace the vanished Amory Manning.”