“You pay me quite a compliment, Red Mike.�
“Will you do that, Lynne?�
“I am considering it. Don’t hurry me. Will you tell me the name of the woman?�
“Yes, if you consent.�
“So there really is a woman behind you, after all, eh?�
“Stow that, Lynne. If you do not give your consentâ€�—he drew the automatic from his pocket—“I’ll use this little toy, right here, and now. That’s final, and I’ll give you just five minutes to answer.â€�
CHAPTER XXVIII.
STARING DEATH IN THE FACE.
There were several years of entire blank behind Carleton Lynne, so far as his memory was concerned.
He had gone to the Klondike before that time, prospecting for gold, and he had gone to that country of blizzards and gold, starvation and plenty with a man named Henry Carroll, to whom Red Mike had already made reference in the foregoing conversation.
In the mind of Lynne there was here and there a hazy recollection of some of the lesser things that had happened to him after he so nearly died of exposure and injuries in the far north; but in the main he knew nothing of those intervening years, and had known little or nothing of himself, not even his name, until a short time before Patsy found him, to bear out the proof that the impostor in the East, Henry Carroll, was not the heir to so many millions.