Geoffrey glanced significantly at Mr. Huntress.
“What was his object in registering there as William Dale?” he asked.
Everet looked up, astonished.
“He did not,” he said, skeptically.
“He did. I met him one morning in Congress Park. He accosted me by your name, believing me to be yourself, and then became greatly agitated upon being informed of his mistake and told who I was. My suspicions were aroused, for I have always been on the alert to discover my parentage, and I begged an interview with him. He appointed one for five o’clock at his room, number forty-five, at the United States Hotel. I was punctual, but when I inquired for the gentleman who occupied room forty-five, I was told that he had left at noon. I examined the register, and found his name entered as ‘William Dale, from Santa Fe. New Mexico.’”
“Then it must have been some one else,” Everet affirmed, perplexed over the affair, and yet instinctively feeling that his father must have been concerned in it, though just how he was at a loss to imagine.
“That was the thread by which I traced him to Santa Fe, and from there to that mining village, where I learned the story of my birth and my mother’s death; and this story will have to be sifted to the bottom,” Geoffrey concluded in a resolute tone.
“Really, I do not see what use there will be in raising a row over the affair,” retorted Everet, with a supercilious glare at the young man. “There are hundreds of men who have been rather gay and wild in their youth, and if there have been girls in the world who were foolish enough to accept their favors, it is nobody’s business but their own, and worse than folly to rake it over. Colonel William Mapleson is a man who occupies an honorable position and bears a proud name. He is a high-tempered gentleman, too, and I warn you will brook no nonsense from any one.”
Doctor Hoyt, who had been an interested listener thus far during the interview, turned abruptly on his heel, with an expression of supreme contempt at this speech.
“Honorable position—proud name, forsooth! Possesses more temper than morality, I should judge, if his son is a specimen of the race,” he muttered, and then passed up stairs to ascertain if all was going well with his fair patient.