“It sounds so complete,” submitted her nephew.
“Therefore distrust it,” she argued dryly. “Gaboriau’s great detective and Conan Doyle’s both have that same maxim—not to pick out easy answers.”
Winter smiled in his own turn. “Still, sometimes the easy answers are right. Now, here is the situation: I hear this conversation at the depot. I find one of the men on the same train with me. He, presumably, if he is Cary Mercer, and I don’t think I can be mistaken in his identity—”
“Unless another man is making up as Cary!”
“It may seem conceited, but I don’t think I could be fooled. This man had every expression of the other’s, and I was too struck by the—I may almost call it malignant—look he had, not to recognize him. No, it was Mercer; he would certainly recognize you, and he would know who I am; he would not be called upon to snub me as a possible confidence man.”
“That rankles yet, Bertie?”
He made a grimace and nodded.
“But,” he insisted, “isn’t it so? If he is up to some mischief, any mischief—doesn’t care to have his kin meet him—that is the way he would act, don’t you think?”
“He might be up to mischief, yet have no designs on his kin.”
“He might,” said the colonel musingly. A thought which he did not confide to the shrewd old woman had just flipped his mind. But he went on with his plea.