“They tell me that you are well on the road to recovery,” he said. “I am very glad that it is so.”
“Who are you?” asked the man.
“I am Bernard Custer, an American. You were found beneath my car at the bottom of a ravine. I feel that I owe you full reparation for the injuries you received, though it is beyond me how you happened to be found under the machine. Unless I am truly mad, I was the only occupant of the roadster when it plunged over the embankment.”
“It is very simple,” replied the man upon the cot. “I chanced to be at the bottom of the ravine at the time and the car fell upon me.”
“What were you doing at the bottom of the ravine?” asked Barney quite suddenly, after the manner of one who administers a third degree.
The man started and flushed with suspicion.
“That is my own affair,” he said.
He tried to disengage his hand from Barney’s, and as he did so the American felt something within the fingers of the other. For an instant his own fingers tightened upon those that lay within them, so that as the others were withdrawn his index finger pressed close upon the thing that had aroused his curiosity.
It was a large setting turned inward upon the third finger of the left hand. The gold band that Barney had seen was but the opposite side of the same ring.
A quick look of comprehension came to Barney’s eyes. The man upon the cot evidently noted it and rightly interpreted its cause, for, having freed his hand, he now slipped it quickly beneath the coverlet.