shed me was
merely temporary. I did not cable to him from America regarding the
success of the expedition, because I could not be certain it was a
success until I was safely on English ground, and not even then, to
tell the truth. Anyhow, I wished to leave no trail behind me, but the
moment the _Arontic_ reached Liverpool, I telegraphed Sanderson to
meet us that evening at my flat.

He was waiting for me when Wyoming Ed and I entered together. The old
man was quite evidently in a state of nervous tension. He had been
walking up and down the room with hands clenched behind his back, and
now stood at the end farthest from the door as he heard us approach,
with his hands still clasped behind his back, and an expression of
deep anxiety upon his rugged face. All the electric lamps were turned
on, and the room was bright as day.

'Have you not brought him with you?' he cried.

'Brought him with me?' I echoed. 'Here is Wyoming Ed!'

The old man glared at him for a moment or two stupefied, then
moaned:--

'Oh, my God, my God, that is not the man!'

I turned to my short-haired fellow traveller.

'You told me you were Wyoming Ed!'

He laughed uneasily.

'Well, in a manner of speaking, so I have been for the last five
years, but I wasn't Wyoming Ed before that. Say, old man, are you
acting for Colonel Jim Baxter?'

Sanderson, on whom a dozen years seemed to have fallen since we
entered the room, appeared unable to speak, and merely shook his head
in a hopeless sort of way.

'I say, boys,' ejaculated the ex-convict, with an uneasy laugh,
half-comic, half-bewildered, 'this is a sort of mix-up, isn't it? I
wish Colonel Jim was here to explain. I say, Boss,' he cried suddenly,
turning sharp on me, 'this here misfit's not my fault. I didn't change
the children in the cradle. You don't intend to send me back to that
hell-hole, do you?'

'No,' I said, 'not if you tell the truth. Sit down.'

The late prisoner seated himself in a chair as close to the door as
possible, hitching a little nearer as he sat down. His face had taken
on a sharp, crafty aspect like that of a trapped rat.

'You are perfectly safe,' I assured him. 'Sit over here by the table.
Even if you bolted through that door, you couldn't get out of this
flat. Mr. Sanderson, take a chair.'

The old man sank despondently into the one nearest at hand. I pressed
a button, and when my servant entered, I said to him:--

'Bring some Cognac and Scotch whisky, gla