"I suppose you are wondering why I sent for you," she remarked, after a perceptible interval, and Kirk felt instantly that their old relations could not at once be resumed. "I have discovered something very important, and I felt that you ought to know."
"Thank you," said Kirk, humbly. "It was very kind."
"You see," she went on, with a certain hesitancy, "you confided your story to me so frankly I felt under a certain obligation." She made a little dramatic pause. "I've discovered who Jefferson Locke is!"
"No! Who is he?" Kirk was instantly all attention, for the announcement came as something of a shock. He had almost forgotten Locke.
"His real name is Frank Wellar, and he is an absconder. He was a broker's clerk in St. Louis, and he made off with something like eighty thousand dollars in cash."
"Good heavens!" said Anthony. "How did you find out?"
"A bundle of New York papers—they came to-day."
"Where did they catch him?"
"They haven't caught him. He has disappeared completely—that's the strangest part of it. Your detective didn't die, after all."
"He recovered, did he? I'm mighty glad of that."