“How did you get the connection?”
“I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle.”
Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased with himself, slightly boastful.
“Some little stroke, Dick!” he said. “What price Mr. Judson Clark to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face when he reads that thing.”
“There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?”
“It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know—Look here,” he exploded, “you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?”
“I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead.”
“Oh, piffle!” Bassett groaned. “Don't start that all over again. Don't pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and wandering off to drive a taxicab.”
Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a sort of savage tenderness.
“You're crazy,” he said morosely. “Darned if I understand you. Here I've got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing.”