"No. I have suspected it from the moment Starr Wiley announced his discovery, for he had threatened me with it in advance; had tried to bargain with me, in fact." Willa paused. "I had intended to go on from here to the Flathead Lake country in Montana and then to Arizona in an effort to establish what you have discovered. I am anxious to know how you stumbled upon the truth."
It was only when they had reached the little hotel sitting-room and established themselves before the replenished stove that Kearn Thode enlightened her.
"You may remember, Miss Murdaugh, that I knew Starr Wiley before I met him again in Limasito, and that knowledge alone would have impelled me to distrust at sight any claims which he might produce, no matter what their nature," he began. "When Winthrop North told me that our friend had been the means of proving you were not the granddaughter of Giles Murdaugh, I doubted, and when I learned the name which Gentleman Geoff was supposed to have signed to the adoption papers with the trapper, I knew the whole thing was a frame-up. Gentleman Geoff's name was not Abercrombie."
"How do you know that?" Willa asked, amazed.
"He told me the truth himself, just a little while before he died," Thode responded. "I gave him my word to keep his confidence, but now in your interest I know that he would have me speak. He was Geoffrey Rendell, of a fine old family, university bred and with a brilliant future before him, if he had so chosen. I have traced as much of his career as anyone can ever know now and I will never betray the reason for his ultimate choice, but you may rest assured that his nickname was no label of chance or whim. He was a gentleman always in the truest, finest sense of the word."
"Nothing could ever make me doubt that for an instant," Willa said with glowing eyes. "There could have been nothing discreditable in his past and he was a clean sportsman in the life he chose, square and philosophical; a game loser, a generous winner! Poor Dad! Mr. Thode, tell me how you succeeded in learning the truth."
"When I was convinced that trickery was at work I persuaded Winthrop to let me see and photograph the adoption agreement. With that as a basis I went straight to Pima, in Graham County, Arizona, where Frank Hillery, the trapper, had died and Wiley professed to have run across his papers. Hillery died only seven or eight months ago, you know, and it wasn't difficult to find out all about him.
"He landed there in the spring of nineteen four, and opened a little store with general merchandise. He was still keeping it when he was stricken with typhoid last year and died. I readily found the widow who had kept house for him all those years and interviewed his friends. His long sojourn in the wilds evidently had their reaction when he settled down in civilization once more, for he became exceedingly garrulous, and his friends were familiar with every detail of his past life. His favorite narrative was of the coming of Gentleman Geoff with you to his cabin; of the death of his own little daughter and of Gentleman Geoff's long illness and subsequent gratitude and generosity to him. Your foster father, in recognition of his hospitality and care, had given him sufficient money to start in business, and Hillery never forgot it. When he died he left no papers except a brief will, and his old trunks and boxes remained undisturbed in the attic, until about three months ago when a strange young man appeared in Pima."
Thode paused and Willa caught her breath. She had momentarily forgotten the narrator himself in her interest in his story, and the quick color came and went in her cheeks. It seemed to the young engineer that she bloomed like a splendid rose in the homely, bare little room and the wistfulness deepened in his eyes, but he went on in a sternly impersonal voice:
"The man was Wiley, under an assumed name, of course. He posed as a nephew of the dead man, and when the beneficiaries found he had no intention of attempting to dispute the will, being wealthy himself, they gladly made friends with him and told him all they knew of his late uncle.