Broffin nodded. "Yes; in a letter that you didn't sign: we'll come to that a little later. The name you gave was John Wesley Gavitt, and you knew that wasn't his right name, didn't you?"
She made the sign of assent without thinking that it might imply the knowing of more.
"It was the name under which he was enrolled in the Belle Julie's crew, and it was sufficient to identify him," she countered; adding: "It did identify him. The officers found him and arrested him at St. Louis."
"Yes; and he made his get-away in about fifteen minutes after they had nabbed him, as you probably read in the papers the next morning. He's loose yet, and most naturally he ain't signing his name 'Gavitt' any more whatever. I've come all the way from New Orleans, and a whole heap farther, to get you to tell me his real name, Miss Farnham."
"Why do you think I can tell you?" was the undisturbed query.
"A lot of little things," said the detective, who was slowly coming to his own in the matter of self-assurance. "In the first place, he spoke to you in the bank, and you answered him. Isn't that so?"
She nodded, but the firm lips remained closed where the lips of another woman might have opened to repeat what had been said at the teller's wicket.
"Then, afterwards, on the boat, before you sent the letter, you talked with him. It was one evening, just at dusk, on the starboard promenade of the saloon-deck: he was comin' down from the pilot-house and you stopped him. That was when he told you what his name was on the steamboat's books, wasn't it?—what?"
She nodded again. "You know so much, it is surprising that you don't know it all, Mr. Broffin," she commented, with gentle sarcasm.
"The one thing I don't know is the thing you're goin' to tell me—his real name," he insisted. "That's what I've come here for."