"Well—imposter!" laughed Cleggett. "Is she able to talk to you yet? And what on earth did she mean by her plum preserves?"
"That is what she wants to tell, evidently," said Lady Agatha. And she went aft with him.
Miss Pringle, who had been rubbed dry by Lady Agatha, and was now dressed in some articles of that lady's clothing, which were much too large for her, sat on the edge of the bed in Lady Agatha's stateroom and awaited them. Her appearance was scarcely conventional, and she seemed to feel it; nevertheless, she had a duty to perform, and her innate propriety still triumphed over her situation and habiliments.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, pointing to the box which contained the evidence against Logan Black, which was exactly similar to the box of Reginald Maltravers, and which had been placed in this inner room for safe-keeping, "what does that box contain?"
Cleggett was startled. He and Lady Agatha exchanged glances.
"What do you think it contains?" he asked.
"That box," she said, "was shipped to me from Flatbush, and was claimed in my name—in the name of Genevieve Pringle—at the freight depot at Newark, New Jersey, by this lady here. Deny it if you can!"
"I do deny it, Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, accompanying her words with a winsome smile. But Miss Pringle was not to be won over so easily as all that; she met the smile with a look of steady reprobation. And then she turned to Cleggett again.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, "my birthday occurred a few days ago. It was—I have nothing to conceal, Mr. Cleggett—it was my forty-ninth birthday. Every year, for many years past, a niece of mine who lives in Flatbush sends me on my birthday a box of plum preserves.
"These preserves have for me, Mr. Cleggett, a value that they would not possess for anyone else; a value far above their intrinsic or, as one might say, culinary value. They have a sentimental value as well. I was born in Flatbush, and lived there, during my youth, on my father's estate. The city has since grown around the old place, which my niece now owns, but the plum trees stand as they have stood for more than fifty years. It was beneath these plum trees...."