“Selinski,” I said.
“Yes, that was it; though I haven’t been able to remember it. They wouldn’t believe me when I said I’d only met him quite casually at dinner, the night before I was kidnapped,—for I really was kidnapped, Maurice—and that I knew nothing whatever about him. They kept me in a dark cell for hours, till I was half-crazy with anger and terror; and then they brought me out, and I saw you, and father; and the next thing I knew I was in bed in an hotel we’ve often stayed at, in Berlin. Father tries to persuade me that I imagined the whole thing; but I didn’t; now did I, Maurice? And what does it all mean?”
“It was all a mistake. You were taken for some one else; some one whom you resemble very closely.”
“That’s just what I thought; though father won’t believe it; or he pretends he won’t; but I am sure he knows something that he will not tell me. But there’s another thing,—that dreadful man Cassavetti. Perhaps I oughtn’t to call him that, as he’s dead; I only heard about the murder a little while ago, and then almost by accident. Maud Vereker told me; do you know her?”
“That frivolous little chatterbox; yes, I’ve met her, though I’d forgotten her name.”
“She told me all about it one day. Mary and Jim had never said a word; they seemed to be in a conspiracy of silence! But when I heard it I was terribly upset. Think of any one suspecting you of murdering him, Maurice,—just because he lived on the floor above you, and you happened to find him. You poor boy, what dreadful troubles you have been through!”
There was an interlude here; we had a good many such interludes, but even when my arm was round her, when my lips pressed hers, I could scarcely realize that I was awake and sane.
“It was just as well they did suspect me, darling,” I said after a while, “or I most certainly shouldn’t have been here now.”
She nestled closer to me, with a little sob.