"He is too good a poker-player," I said.
"Like his skeletons, eh?" she said.
"But what made you think it was Tobias?" I asked, "and how did it all happen?"
"I could hardly fail to recognise him from your flattering description," she answered, "and indeed it all happened rather like another experience of mine. I had gone into Sweeney's store—you remember?—and was just paying my bill."
"In the usual coinage?" I ventured. She gave me a long, whimsical smile—once more her father's daughter.
"That, I'm afraid, was the trouble," she answered; "for, as I laid my money down on the counter, I suddenly noticed that there was a person at the back of the store ..."
"A person?" I interrupted.
"Yes! suppose we say 'a pock-marked person'; was it you?"
"What a memory you have for details," I parried, "and then?"
"Well! I took my change and managed to whisper a word to Sweeney—a good friend, remember—and came out. I took a short cut back, but the 'person' that had stood in the back of the store seemed to know the way almost better than I—so well that he had got ahead of me. He was walking quietly this way, and so slowly that I had at last to overtake him. He said nothing, just watched me, as if interested in the way I was going—but, I'm ashamed to say, he rather frightened me! And here I am."