“Yes.”
She did not ask why he had put the question. She waited for the next one which she seemed to know would follow upon the first.
“How long have you known that he was not dead?” asked Nick.
“Always,” she replied, still with her eyes lowered. “At least, I knew almost at once that the report was untrue. As young as I was—only ten—he trusted me to keep his secret. He sent me a long letter in which he told me all his dreadful history—and sorrow—and, oh, I cannot talk about it. Later, I saw him.”
“Three years later—when you were thirteen—you awoke in the night and saw him at your bedside, did you not?” asked Nick gently.
She raised her eyes then, half-frightened.
“Are you a wizard?” she asked. “I have never told of that circumstance to anybody—not even to Sarah Kearney, my maid, who was my confidant in the other part of it, and whom I swore to secrecy on the most solemn oath I could devise.”
“Sarah has not broken her oath to you. She has told me nothing.”
Mercedes clasped her hands together and gazed imploringly into the detective’s face.
“Then you have seen my brother, Tom,” she said slowly, and with conviction that could not be shaken. “My brother, Tom, who was my idol—whom I worshiped. You have seen him. Nobody else could have told you what only he and I know.”