seem to me just now that
there's much in the world you couldn't buy with five hundred dollars."

"Well, what did you tell Mr. Felix Martin?"

"Oh, I lied, sure! He'd found out the date you came into your rooms
here--the day this man Romilly disappeared--but I told him that I'd known
you and done work for you before then--long enough before the _Elletania_
ever reached New York. That kind of stumped him."

"Why did you do that?" Philip demanded.

"Dunno," the girl replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just a fancy.
I guessed you wouldn't want him poking around."

"But supposing I had been Douglas Romilly, you might at least have
divided the reward," he reminded her.

"There's money and money," Martha declared. "We spoke of that the other
day. Stella's got money--now. Well, she's welcome. My time will come, I
suppose, but if I can't have clean money, I haven't made up my mind yet
whether I wouldn't rather try the Hudson on a foggy morning."

"Well, I am not Douglas Romilly, anyway," Philip announced.

She looked up at him almost for the first time since her entrance.

"I kind of thought you were," she admitted. "I might have saved my lies,
then."

He shook his head.

"You have probably saved me from more than you know of," he replied. "I
am not Douglas Romilly, but--"

"You're not Merton Ware, either," she interrupted.

"Quite right," he agreed. "I started life as Philip Merton Ware the day I
took these rooms, and if the time should come," he went on, "that any one
seriously set about the task of finding out exactly who I was before I
was Merton Ware, you and I might as well take that little journey--was it
to the Hudson, you said, on a foggy morning?--together."

They sat in complete silence for several moments, Then she threw the end
of her cigarette into the fire.

"Well, I'm glad I didn't lie for nothing," she declared. "I didn't quite
tumble to the Douglas Romilly stunt, though. They say he has left his
business bankrupt in England and brought a fortune out here. You don't
look as though you were overdone with it."

"I certainly haven't the fortune that Douglas Romilly is supposed to have
got away with," he said quietly. "I have enough money for my present
needs, though--enough, by-the-by, to pay you for this typing," he added,
counting out the money upon the table.

"Any more stuff ready?"

"With luck there'll be some this afternoon," he promised her. "I had a
bad night last night, but I thi