“Then it was a plot to get me away?” he asked breathlessly.
“Didn’t you know?” She was frankly surprised. “You’re a slow thinker—but you’re right! It was my job to get you away good and safe, and I could have done it, whilst Double Dan——”
“Impersonated me!”
He saw all things clearly. Mysteries were mysteries no more. There was little left upon which a harassed man need speculate.
Her face was sombre and brooding. Evidently she was thinking happily.
“He put one over on me. Gosh! That fellow’s mind is so constructed that he couldn’t go straight if he was sliding down a tube! And I went into it with my eyes open—yes, sir. Some of the boys who’d worked with him and one of his partners told me he’d do it before I left Manhattan Island. I had my warning—but I’m one of those dames who know it all and I wouldn’t believe ’em. That’s the kind of mad woman I am. And all they said came true. Yesterday morning, when everything was fixed for me to tote you to Ostend, I went to see him to split the Mendlesohn money. No, I wasn’t in that. But the little friend of mine who brought Father Eli to the verge of marriage had to go back home. Her eldest boy was ill, and I advanced her her share. Forty-sixty, that’s how I shared, and how Freda had arranged to share. And that’s how I paid her—and it was worth it. Freda put in a whole lot of good, solid work for that guy. Only interest he had in life was stamps—postal stamps. Freda studied those darned foolish things so that she jumped every time the postman knocked. Dan would part on terms—and I’m his friend! Used to be in the same touring company as me, back home!”
Gordon was rubbing his head mechanically.
“Your—your husband, is he?”
Her scorn was visible.
“My husband!” she scoffed. “Now listen! I’m a respectable married woman and you gotta remember that, Man! Married ten years. I’ve the daisiest little apartment over in New York—and a real nice lovely boy of a husband.”