"I, too, regret that you cannot," he returned, with a meaning hidden from Charlotte.
She wanted to hear the particulars, and after he had complied, briefly, she turned to him and asked:
"What do you make of it?"
Before replying, he ran a hand thoughtfully through his gray hair.
"There are two or three questions I should like to ask you before going into that," he returned, "if you please." After a slight pause, taking her silence for consent, he proceeded:
"In my investigation of the two cases I have encountered several coincidences so striking and suggestive that they require the fullest elucidation. Whenever I set my mind to working upon any phase of the duplex problem, one mystic word immediately becomes the pivot about which everything else begins to circle; whatever reasonable theory I may begin to develop, it sooner or later encounters 'Paquita,' and I am unable to get beyond her, or to see anything very clearly for the shadow she casts. And now, in the face of evidence all pointing quite another way, I have become possessed of a conviction that 'Paquita' embodies the crux of the entire problem. Paquita—what do you spell? Silence is the only answer." Suddenly he caught the intent look with which she was following him, and he laughed in a deprecating way.
"Heaven knows, I am prosaic enough myself, Miss Fairchild," he continued, "but I overlook no possibilities, however slender they may be; and it is particularly aggravating to have a circumstance like this remain so completely inexplicable—so insusceptible to the most determined efforts. It is as if the minx were mocking me. I have spent a number of years in Latin America, and am tolerably familiar with their customs; but everything I have endeavored to ascertain of the shadowy Paquita has been as barren of results as my father's old Connecticut farm. That mysterious name suggests an element of romance which appeals to the average individual; but the romance is not forthcoming."
"Does the name appear elsewhere besides on Doctor Westbrook's paper-knife?"
For answer he drew forth his pocket-book, and producing therefrom the bit of paper he had found in the Westbrook ash-hopper, handed it to her.
"This is all that remains of a letter received by General Westbrook day before yesterday, and burnt by him some time during the same night. I was searching for something altogether different—a writing upon which he was engaged shortly before his death—and was led to this.