f you've
told your husband about it"--he dragged his words just a trifle--"why
should you be so worried, even if these pictures should reach him?"

Her look told him the shot had struck home. Inwardly he rejoiced,
knowing, before she answered, what her answer would be.

"But I didn't tell him," she confessed, stricken with a new cause for
concern. "I--I forgot to tell him."

"Oh, you forgot to tell him?" he repeated. Now suddenly he became a
cross-examiner, snapping his questions at her, catching her up sharply
in her replies. "And you say you never saw this Mr. Murrill--as you call
him--before in all your life?"

"No."

"And you've never seen the mysterious stranger since?"

"There was nothing mysterious about him, I tell you. He was merely
interesting."

"Anyhow, you've never seen him since?"

"No."

"Nor had any word from him other than that telephone talk you say you
had with him?"

"No."

"Did you ever make any inquiries with a view to finding out whether
there was such a person as this Mrs. Beeman Watrous?"

"No; why should I?"

"That's a question for you to decide. Did you think to look in the
papers to see whether General Dunlap had really been taken ill on a
motor trip?"

"No."

"Yet he's a well-known person. Surely you expected the papers would
mention his illness?"

"It never occurred to me to look. I tell you there was nothing wrong
about it. Why do you try to trip me up so?"

"Excuse me, I'm only trying to help you out of what looks like a pretty
bad mess. But I've got to get the straight of it. Let me run over the
points in your story: No sooner do you land in Gulf Stream City than
your husband gets a faked-up telegram and goes away? And you are left
all alone? And you go for a walk all by yourself? And a man you never
laid eyes on before comes up to you and tells you that you look a lot
like a friend of his, a certain very rich widow, Mrs. Watrous--somebody,
though, that I for one never heard of, and I know the Social Register
from cover to cover, and know something about Wilmington too. And on the
strength of your imaginary resemblance to an imaginary somebody he
introduced himself to you? And then you let him walk with you? And you
let him whisper pleasant things in your ear? Two of those pictures that
you've got in your hand prove that. And you let him take you into one of
the most notorious blind tigers on the beach? And you sit there with him
in this dump--this place with a s