“I am compelled to admit that I fear that it was a question of which he had already guessed the answer,” he said.
At this point Miss Alicia clasped her hands quite tightly together upon her knees.
“If you please,” she exclaimed, “I must ask you to make things a little clear to me. What dreadful thing has happened? I will regard any communication as a most sacred confidence.”
“I think we may as well, Palford?” Mr. Grimby suggested to his partner.
“Yes,” Palford acquiesced. He felt the difficulty of a blank explanation. “We are involved in a most trying position,” he said. “We feel that great discretion must be used until we have reached more definite certainty. An extraordinary—in fact, a startling thing has occurred. We are beginning, as a result of cumulative evidence, to feel that there was reason to believe that the Klondike story was to be doubted—”
“That poor Jem—!” cried Miss Alicia.
“One begins to be gravely uncertain as to whether he has not been in this house for months, whether he was not the mysterious Mr. Strangeways!”
“Jem! Jem!” gasped poor little Miss Temple Barholm, quite white with shock.
“And if he was the mysterious Strangeways,” Mr. Grimby assisted to shorten the matter, “the American Temple Barholm apparently knew the fact, brought him here for that reason, and for the same reason kept him secreted and under restraint.”
“No! No!” cried Miss Alicia. “Never! Never! I beg you not to say such a thing. Excuse me—I cannot listen! It would be wrong—ungrateful. Excuse me!” She got up from her seat, trembling with actual anger in her sense of outrage. It was a remarkable thing to see the small, elderly creature angry, but this remarkable thing had happened. It was as though she were a mother defending her young.