Revell laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh.
“Then, to employ an antique jest, you ought to sue your faces for libel.”
Archly once more Tatum smiled.
“You may think better of that when I tell you that you are in imminent danger of arrest. Don’t you think now that we’d better find a quiet little corner?”
“Less than ever. If you have any charges, call the police.”
At that, into it, Glendenning jumped.
“If he does, the charge will be murder!”
Tatum turned to him.
“Tut, tut! Softly does it.” He turned to Revell. “My client is a bit brusque. He probably wished to represent that the man who died at the Morrow House was not his cousin.”
“Well, what of it?”
“What of it?” Tatum, affecting the profoundest astonishment, exclaimed. “Why, Mr. Revell, if that man was not Mike, where is Mike?” He paused, dropped his voice, and unconcernedly added: “But I don’t need to ask—I know.”
“What the deuce do you want, then?”
“To save you, as I said, from a very awkward predicament.”
“Thanks. I can take care of myself.”
“Mr. Revell, you will hardly say that when I, as the representative of this gentleman, my client, oppose the probating of the will of which you are the beneficiary on the ground—Shall I tell you what it is in some quieter place?”
“No. Moreover, I don’t care a rap what your grounds are. I don’t care a rap whether you contest it or not. But meanwhile I have no intention of being blackmailed.”
Glendenning squared himself.
“You shall answer for that.”
Revell laughed again.
“See here, Glendenning. Do you believe in miracles? For you ought to, you know. It has taken a procession of them to keep you out of Sing Sing and I dare say that the same is true of your fat friend.”
Before either could retort, a page came bawling:
“Mr. Revell! Mr. Revell!”
Revell stopped him.
“Mr. Revell? Wanted at the telephone, sir.”
“Ask them to hold it a moment,” Revell instructed the lad and turned again to Glendenning. “Now drop your airs. Do you remember the last thing Mike said to you? He said, ‘I’ll surprise you yet.’ Mark my words, he will.”
He turned again, lounged down the hall, entered a booth, closed the door. He was in a quiet place at last.
Uncertainly, for a moment, the two men eyed each other. Tatum was the first to speak.
“That fellow has got a card up his sleeve. A card? He has a whole pack of them. Now, what are they? At the same time, he might have been more civil. That mention of miracles was very ungentlemanly.”
Glendenning did not immediately reply. When he did, he swore.
“Confound the brute! When he first got here, I felt that I had seen him somewhere and told him so, and what do you suppose he said?”
“What?”
“That he went there now and then.”
“Think of that, now! Sh! Here he is.”
Meanwhile, over the wire, Revell had been listening to Camille.
“Victor, I found the coin and the spring. It opened like a locket. Victor?”
“Yes?”
“In it was a slip of paper on which Mike had written that the slip was just to establish his identity in case of dispute. Victor?”
“Yes?”
“Mike said that he was going to have his face entirely altered and that Doctor Dix has some Medical Record which tells how it is done. Victor?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, Victor, are you you or are you Mike?”
“I don’t hear you?” replied Revell, who heard perfectly. “But no matter. Have you changed your mind or shall I come?”
“Come! Come! Whoever you are, I adore you!”
Now, that conversation at an end, Revell lounged along to finish the other, and very fit and fine he looked. And that scorn, that anger, where were they? Actually, he was offering Tatum his hand.
“I’m sorry to have kept you standing here. It was most inhospitable of me. I would have asked you elsewhere, but I was expecting a message. Now, though, if I may advise you, Mr. Tatum, and that gentleman your client, let me suggest that you ask Doctor Dix for a Medical Record that he has in his office and that contains an article written by a San Francisco surgeon. The article, if I remember rightly, is entitled ‘Facial Sculpturing,’ and when you have looked it over, you will perhaps understand what a man of your ability might have grasped long since.”
Tatum, glaring his fiercest, gently asked:
“And what is that?”
Revell had been speaking very engagingly, but he had been speaking, too, in a voice other than that which he habitually used, a voice before which Glendenning backed in sheer terror.
“What is it?” he repeated. “To my regret, I have hardly the time to tell you. But summarily the article is to the effect that a man—for the sake, let us say, of winning a girl—may have his appearance so altered that the girl will not recognize him—or, for that matter, his own cousin, either.”
Glendenning, clutching at Tatum for support, spluttered feverishly:
“You don’t mean that you’re Mike?”
The impostor, smiling cruelly at him, smiled also at the lawyer.
“Take him home, Mr. Tatum. The dear boy never was strong—particularly in the upper story.”
The effect of that was as abrupt as it was blighting. Tatum and Glendenning fell, open-mouthed, apart, fell literally to pieces. For a second, Glendenning, his jaw working, his eyes bulging, stared and swayed. Then, drunkenly, he staggered to the door.
But Tatum, who, with a mighty effort, was recovering, stood his ground. “Mr. Vulper, just that I may preserve your respect, let me assure you that from the start I suspected it. If now, or later, I can be of use, my address is—”
Mike laughed.
“I don’t expect to die just yet, but, when I do, I may ask you to draw another will. It will be simple enough. Everything to my wife.”
On Tatum’s fierce face that arch smile feebly showed itself.
“Oh! You are married, then! I—”
“Not yet,” Mike, making for the lift, replied. “But I shall be tomorrow. Good night.”
“Good night,” murmured Tatum, who, at the door, put that last straw on the broken
