“I realize that,” returns Aleck slowly; “but perhaps I may unearth some fact that will help me to solve this question. You told me the lovely Marda died a year or so after reaching Chicago.”
“So Scutari said and swore to.”
“Yet the daughter knows nothing concerning her mother. Why should Samson Cereal desire to keep the facts from her if there was nothing to conceal?”
“Look here, you’re probing this thing like a lawyer. You go beyond me. I deal in facts, and never worry about the reasons back of them. What are you getting at—didn’t Marda die?”
“Ah! that is what I am unable to say. It is a secret that perhaps only Samson Cereal could explain. As to myself, without any positive proof to back my theory up, I have a notion that all these years the old manipulator of wheat has deceived his daughter.”
“Confusion! I say, you strike hard, Cannuck.”
“That Marda is not dead.”
“Bless me! what puts such a strange notion into your head, my dear fellow?”
“I believe I have seen her.”
Craig smokes his cigar while delivering these sledge-hammer blows. He really enjoys the astonishment of his companion, for generally Wycherley is proof against such assault.