“Of course you believed every word of that?” asked Landis. “It’s all so likely!”
“Wait a bit,” Graham frowned. “There’s something coming that’s a million times less likely and quite true!”
“We’ll try to believe you,” Bernard rumbled.
Graham laughed.
“That’s all I ask! Anyhow, I looked and looked and always failed. In the meantime, I’d met, at a friend’s studio, a girl named Ethel Craig. I guess you both know what it’s like when a girl bowls you over. She bowled me over clean! During this time she was trying to get on the stage again, as she was out of a job. I helped her all I could and we got to know each other well. She seemed to like me and one day, after I had been telling her about myself as a fellow will, she confided to me a little of her own early days. She told me that her parents were old and cross, her home environment a sordid and miserable one. They had made her do chores from morning till night and had never shown the slightest affection for her. Instead, their attitude had always been that she was a burden to them.”
Graham paused reminiscently.
“She had run away from home nearly three years before to seek her fortune and had changed her name so that they could not find her and drag her back!”
The two detectives sat forward in their chairs as though suddenly enlightened.
“It was Ethel Cuddy!” cried Landis.
“You’ve stolen my thunder!” Graham complained. “Ethel Cuddy it was! It seemed incredible of course. But with my search always in mind, it leapt to the eye. I wanted to surprise her and tell her what her name had been. But I had to stick to my bargain with Harrison. If I had shown her that I knew, she would have asked a million questions. So I just asked her what her name had been and she told me—Ethel Cuddy!”