The man was frankly a criminal--but not to the
extent of murder. And in that respect, at least, he was honest with
himself. Almost the first words he said to me were: 'Miss LaSalle, I am
as good as a dead man if I am caught by the devils behind those two men
downstairs.' And then he began to plead with me to make my own escape.
He did not know who the man was that was posing as my uncle, had never
seen him before until he presented himself as Henry LaSalle; the other
man he knew as Clarke, but knew also that 'Clarke' was merely an assumed
name. He had fallen in with Clarke almost from the time that he had
begun to practise his profession, and at Clarke's instigation had gone
from one crooked deal to another, and had made a great deal of money. He
knew that behind Clarke was a powerful, daring, and unscrupulous band of
criminals, organised on a gigantic scale, of which he himself was, in
a sense--a probationary sense, as he put it--a member; but he had never
come into direct contact with them--he had received all his orders and
instructions through Clarke. He had been told by Clarke that he was to
cultivate father following the introduction, to win father's confidence,
to get as many of father's affairs into his hands as possible, to reach
the position, in fact, of becoming father's recognised attorney--and
all this with the object, as he supposed of embezzling from father on
a large scale. Then father died, and Travers was instructed to cable my
uncle. He knew that the man who answered that summons was an impostor;
but he did not know, until they had admitted it to him that night, that
both my father and my uncle had been murdered, and that I, too, was to
be made away with."

She looked at Jimmie Dale, and suddenly laughed out bitterly.

"No; you don't understand, even yet, the patient, ingenious deviltry
of those fiends. It was they, at the time the new will was drawn, who
offered to buy out my real uncle's sheep ranch in that lonely, unsettled
district in Australia, and offered him that new position in New Zealand.
My uncle never reached New Zealand. He was murdered on his way there.
And in his place, assuming his name, appeared the man who has been
posing as my uncle ever since. Do you begin to see! For five years
they were patiently working out their plans, for five years before
my father's death that man lived and became known and accepted, and
ESTABLISHED himself as Henry LaSalle. Do you see now why he cabled us t