"Then I knew it wasn't Johnston Barker. The reason for Mrs. Whitehall's disturbance was as well known to him as it was to me. Besides in our talks together he had never alluded to her as 'Mrs. Whitehall' but always as 'your mother' or by her Christian name, Serena.
"I said the mystery of his disappearance had upset her, she was afraid something had happened to him. A faint laugh—with again that curiously familiar echo in it—came along the wire:
"'You can set her mind at rest after you've seen me.'
"There was something ghastly about it—talking to this unknown being, listening to that whispering voice that called me to come and wasn't the voice I knew. It was like an evil spirit, close to me but invisible, and that I had no power to lay hold of.
"While I was thinking this he was telling me that he had a safe hiding place and that I must join him at once, the plans were now perfected for the new enterprise in which he was to launch me. I demurred and to gain time told him how I'd tried to go before and been followed. That caught his attention at once, his questions came quick and eager. Perhaps before that he had tried to disguise his voice, anyway now the familiar note in it grew stronger. I began to catch at something—inflexions, accent—till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and sees his goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name—Harland!
"I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment I couldn't speak. The voice brought me back, saying sharply, 'Are you there?' I stammered a reply and said I couldn't make up my mind to come. He urged, but I wouldn't promise, till at length, feeling I might betray myself, I said I'd think it over and let him know later. He had to be satisfied with that and gave me his telephone number telling me to call him up as soon as I decided.
"What did I feel as I sat alone in that dismantled place? Can you realize the state of my thoughts? What did it mean—what was going on? The man was not Johnston Barker, but how could he be Harland, who was dead and buried? Ah, if you had come then instead of Friday I'd have told you for I was in waters too deep for me. All that I could grasp was that I was in the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from the darkness of which one thought stood out—my father had never sent for me, I had never heard from him—it had been this other man all along! I was then as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me that Johnston Barker was dead.
"And now I come to one of the strangest and finest things that ever happened to me in my life. Late on Sunday night a girl—unknown to me and refusing to give her name—came and told me of the murder, the whole of it, the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger of immediate arrest."
I jumped to my feet—I couldn't believe it:
"A girl—what kind of a girl?"