"Good Lord," groaned Shandon. "I could wring your neck, Dart. What in the world made you lie to her like that?"
"This here is a prime cigar, Red. Better send for a fresh box, this one is drying up. Now, I'm going to tell you something: My mother was a fortune teller and maybe that's why it is, but anyway I can dope up what people are thinking lots of times. I hadn't any more than said Red Shandon to her than I got wise to that little girl's trouble. Say, Red, she's just naturally stuck on you! It's a fact! Now, when a woman's stuck on a guy, what's the way to make her go clean nuts over him? What's the answer? Why, just tell her about the other woman like I told Wanda about Princess Helga."
"Helga?" cried Shandon in sheer wonder. "What Helga?"
"The Roosian princess," beamed Willie Dart.
"Dart," very sternly. "You lie to me now and I'll wire the police of New York that you are here. I ought to do it anyway; I would have done it when you came if I hadn't been a fool and you hadn't filled me up with your lies until I was sorry for you. Why did you say Helga? Where did you learn that name? What Helga do you know?"
Dart hesitated briefly, his childlike eyes smiling frankly, the shrewd side of his strange brain very busy.
"When you took me up to your room that day in New York and threw some grub into me," he replied at last with apparent carelessness, "and left me for a minute, why I just sort of looked things over. There was a letter with Helga signed to it. The name's awful funny, ain't it? She is Roosian, ain't she?"
"What do you know about her?"
"Just that she was much obliged to you for the information you promised to send her about something or other. It ain't anything to send you up the river for, Red."
"What did you tell Miss Leland?"