“Do not fear me, Adrian, though for a moment I forgot myself. For you, personally—personally—I have only great good will. But—will you answer my questions, believing that it a painful necessity which compels them?”
“Certainly.”
“One word more. Beyond the fact, which you confided to Margot, that you were a runaway, I know no details of your past life. I have wished not to know and have refrained from any inquiries. I must now break that silence. What—is your father’s name?”
As he spoke the man’s hands gripped the arms of his chair more tightly, like one prepared for an unpleasant answer.
“Malachi Wadislaw.”
The questioner waited a moment, during which he seemed to be thinking profoundly. Then he rallied his own judgment. It was an uncommon name, but there might be two men bearing it. That was not impossible.
“Where does he live?”
“Number —, Madison Avenue, New York.”
A longer silence than before, broken by a long drawn “A-ah!” There might, indeed, be two men of one name, but not two residing at that once familiar locality.
“Adrian, when you asked my niece that question about her father, did you—had you—tell me what was in your mind.”