“No. Smathers—The Man of Many Faces, as he called himself on the vaudeville stage—is dead. He died about a year and a half ago, Nan told me. Jimmy Duryea was her first husband, you know. She got a divorce from him when he was sent to prison, and afterward married Smathers. Smathers has been dead more than a year, and Nan thinks that Jimmy is still alive.”
“Jimmy Duryea alive? Impossible.”
“That is what I told her; but she insists that she saw him—or his ghost.”
“Then it must have been his ghost, Nick. Jimmy has been dead four years. He died soon after you took him off that island in the Sound, near South Norwalk, didn’t he?”
“That was the supposition. That has always been my belief. Do you remember that last stunt of his, Chick?”
“The time he passed himself off as Paran Maxwell, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I think we all have cause to remember that incident. Bare-Faced Jimmy was a remarkable chap, Nick, take it all in all.”
“He certainly was. There was a great deal of good in Jimmy. You remember there was a time when I thought he had entirely reformed. Then he made that disappearing act of his from the steamship, and bobbed up, long afterward, on that island. It would be strange if he should appear again, after four years, wouldn’t it?”