knew from that moment that whatever advantage a fair
beginning may give was gone beyond recall.

"I guess we can take it for granted that you know what I want, Miss
Farnham," he began abruptly, when he had shifted his chair to face her
rocker. "Something like three months ago, or thereabouts, you went into
a bank in New Orleans to get a draft cashed. While you were at the
paying teller's window a robbery was committed, and you saw it done and
saw the man that did it. I've come to get you to tell me the man's
name."

If he had thought to carry the defences by direct assault he was quickly
made to realize that it could not be done. Miss Farnham's
self-possession was quietly convincing when she said:

"I have told it once, in a letter to Mr. Galbraith."

Broffin nodded. "Yes; in a letter that you didn't sign: we'll come to
that a little later. The name you gave was John Wesley Gavitt, and you
knew that wasn't his right name, didn't you?"

She made the sign of assent without thinking that it might imply the
knowing of more.

"It was the name under which he was enrolled in the _Belle Julie's_
crew, and it was sufficient to identify him," she countered; adding: "It
did identify him. The officers found him and arrested him at St. Louis."

"Yes; and he made his get-away in about fifteen minutes after they had
nabbed him, as you probably read in the papers the next morning. He's
loose yet, and most naturally he ain't signing his name 'Gavitt' any
more whatever. I've come all the way from New Orleans, and a whole heap
farther, to get you to tell me his real name, Miss Farnham."

"Why do you think I can tell you?" was the undisturbed query.

"A lot of little things," said the detective, who was slowly coming to
his own in the matter of self-assurance. "In the first place, he spoke
to you in the bank, and you answered him. Isn't that so?"

She nodded, but the firm lips remained closed where the lips of another
woman might have opened to repeat what had been said at the teller's
wicket.

"Then, afterwards, on the boat, before you sent the letter, you talked
with him. It was one evening, just at dusk, on the starboard promenade
of the saloon-deck: he was comin' down from the pilot-house and you
stopped him. That was when he told you what his name was on the
steamboat's books, wasn't it?--what?"

She nodded again. "You know so much, it is surprising that you don't
know it all, Mr. Broffin," she commented, with gentle sar