No one interrupted. They just listened intently. Once, when he asked if he was wearying them by a too exact description of events at the ranch after his escape, Nina Forbes said quietly:
“Please tell us everything, Mr. Maseden. I have never heard anything half so interesting. You have caused me to forget where I am, and I can give you no higher praise.”
At last he made an end, dwelling purposely on the light note of his troubles with the Spanish sailor who claimed a vested right in him after the incident of the falling block.
Sturgess put a direct question or two.
“You don’t seem to have any sort of a notion as to who the lady was?” he began.
“I only know that her Christian name was Madeleine,” answered Maseden readily. “She was about to sign the register when the idea of getting out of the Castle dawned on me, and, from that instant, I thought of nothing else. I hadn’t much time, you know. The plan had to be concocted and carried out almost in the same breath. And there was no room for failure. The least slip, either in time or method, and I was a dead man.”
“Madeleine!” mused Sturgess aloud. “She was English, or American, I suppose?”
“American, I imagine. Undoubtedly one or the other.”
“And that fat Steinbaum was the marriage broker! I know Steinbaum—a thug, if ever there was one.... What are you going to do about it, Mr. Maseden?”
“Do about what?”