“Your denunciation is quite uncalled for, Holford!” he exclaimed.
“It is not,” I protested. “You know where my wife is, and you refuse to tell me!” was my quick answer.
“Please don’t let us discuss that further,” he urged. “The point is whether you will, or you will not, regard all you saw in this house a couple of months ago as entirely confidential.”
“Why?”
“For reasons which you shall know later. I regret that I cannot explain at this moment, because I should be breaking a confidence,” he responded. “But,” he added, looking at me very seriously, “a life—a woman’s life—depends upon your silence!”
I hesitated a moment.
“Ah, I see!” I cried. “Then the girl conspired to encompass her father’s end, and is now in fear of the impostor!”
“I must leave you to your own opinion,” he said, with a shrug of his thin shoulders. Then, turning away to the window, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and, with that cosmopolitan air of his, he hummed a verse of that catchy song of the boulevards he so often sang.