ionary and fantastic to have any basis
in fact.

"All Travers would have been able to advance was the statement that the
supposed Henry LaSalle had admitted being an impostor and a murderer
to him! Who would believe it! On the face of it, it appeared to be an
absurdity. And even granted that we were given an opportunity to bring
the charge, they would be able to prove by a hundred influential
and well-known men in New Zealand that the impostor was really Henry
LaSalle; and were we able to find any of my uncle's old acquaintances in
Australia, it would be necessary to get them here--and not one of them
would have reached America alive.

"But there was not a chance, not a chance, Jimmie, of doing that--they
would have killed Travers the moment he showed himself in the open. The
only thing we could do that night was to try and save our own lives; the
only thing we could look forward to was acquiring in some way, unknown
to them, the proof, fully established, with which we could crush them in
a single stroke, and before they would have time to strike back.

"The vital thing was proof of my uncle's death. That, if it could
be obtained at all, could only be obtained in Australia. Travers was
obliged to go somewhere, to disappear from that moment if he wanted to
save his life, and he volunteered to go out there. He left the house
that night by the back entrance in an old servant's suit, which I found
for him--and I never heard from him again until a month ago in the
'personal' column of the MORNING NEWS-ARGUS, through which we had agreed
to communicate.

"As for myself, I left the house the next morning, telling my pseudo
uncle that I was going to spend a few days with a friend. And this
I actually did; but in those few days I managed to turn all my own
securities, that had been left me by my mother and which amounted to a
considerable sum, into cash. And then, Jimmie, I came to--this, I have
lived like this and in different disguises, as a settlement worker, as a
widow of means in a fashionable uptown apartment, but mostly as you see
me now--for five years. For five years I have watched my supposed
uncle, hoping, praying that through him I could get to know the others
associated with him; hoping, praying that Travers would succeed; hoping,
praying that we would get them all--and watching day after day, and year
after year the 'personal' column of the paper, until at last I began
to be afraid that it was all useless. And t